Little Happier: Do You Know the Famous Story of the Fox and the Sour Grapes?

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin / The Onward Project

Education, Health & Fitness, Self-improvement

4.7 • 13K Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2020

⏱️ 2 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of Aesop’s most famous fables, and writer Virginia Woolf agree: it’s important to resist the temptation to deny the truth about what we really want. Get in touch: @gretchenrubin; [email protected] Get in touch on Instagram: @GretchenRubin Get the podcast show notes by email every week here: http://gretchenrubin.com/#newsletter Order a copy of Gretchen’s new book OUTER ORDER, INNER CALM here: http://outerorderinnercalmbook.com Leave a voicemail message on: 774-277-9336 For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to happiercast.com/sponsors. Happier with Gretchen Rubin is part of ‘The Onward Project,’ a family of podcasts brought together by Gretchen Rubin—all about how to make your life better. Check out the other Onward Project podcasts—Do The Thing, Side Hustle School, Happier in Hollywood and Everything Happens with Kate Bowler. If you liked this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and tell your friends! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier. I love Maxim's Coins,
0:05.2	Aferisms and Teaching Stories of All Kinds, and so I love Fables, especially Esops Fables,
0:12.0	because I love these kinds of stories so much. For a long time, I assume that everyone knew them
0:16.8	as well as I did, but I've learned that many people aren't familiar with these stories.
0:22.4	So here's one of my favorites. Now you may have heard people use the phrase Sour Grapes
0:27.5	before in conversation, and that phrase comes from this story, one of Esops' most famous
0:33.0	Fables. And here's my version by retelling of it. Once upon a time, a fox was traveling through
0:39.4	the countryside when he spotted a beautiful bunch of ripe grapes hanging from a vine. The vine was
0:45.3	bound along the branch of a tree, and the perfect grapes hung right above the fox's head.
0:51.1	The fox jumped to take a bite, but couldn't reach the branch. So he backed up to take a running leap
0:56.9	and then again fell short. He tried over and over, then sat down in frustration. Then he shook
1:03.2	his head, what a fool I've been, he thinks, why just look at those grapes. They're obviously Sour.
1:08.8	Why have I been wasting my time on a bunch of Sour Grapes? And with great disdain, he trotted off.
1:15.2	Esops Moral is, there are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.
1:22.8	And this is a very useful story. It surprises me how often I fall into this trap of deciding that
1:28.8	something's not worth having if I can't have it. In the diary of writer Virginia Wolfe, I was
1:34.4	struck to see her reminding herself of the importance of avoiding this Sour Grapes attitude.
1:40.0	She wrote, years and years ago, I said to myself, walking up the hill at Beirut, never pretend that
1:46.8	the things you haven't got are not worth having. I find myself turning this phrase over in my head
1:53.2	often, never pretend that the things you haven't got are not worth having. It's easy to act like the
1:59.8	fox with his grapes, but it means denying the truth about what we really want and that form of
2:05.0	self-disruption can be destructive. I'm Gretchen Rubin and I hope this makes your week a little happier.
	...

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