Little Happier: Don’t Tear Down a Fence Until You Know Why It Was Put Up

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Lemonada Media

Self-improvement, Education, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2024

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On a demanding backpacking trip, I saw an illustration of the principle sometimes call “Chesterton’s Fence”: Don’t take down a fence unless you know why it was put there in the first place. If you don’t know why a fence was placed there, you won’t understand the consequences of taking it down. Get in touch: podcast@gretchenrubin.com Follow on social media: @GretchenRubin on YouTube @GretchenRubin on TikTok @GretchenRubin on Instagram @GretchenRubin on Threads Get the podcast show notes by email every week: happiercast.com/shownotes Get Gretchen Rubin’s newest book Life in Five Senses to see how she discovered a surprising path to a life of more energy, creativity, luck, and love: by tuning in to the five senses. Now available - order here. Visit Gretchen's website to learn more about Gretchen's best-selling books, products from The Happiness Project Collection, and the Happier app. 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 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Mom, Dad, can we work around?
0:03.0	James, come rounds.
0:04.0	Can we have Tykawai?
0:05.0	Your maker.
0:06.0	We need speakers.
0:07.0	Pastors.
0:08.0	He's broken it.
0:09.0	She's crying.
0:10.0	Where's the football?
0:12.0	Can we watch cartoons?
0:13.9	Need a crowd pleaser?
0:15.0	Let's watch something with planets.
0:16.8	A musical.
0:18.0	cartoons.
0:18.7	The match.
0:19.7	New E.E TV lets you search live and on demand all in one place. Search E. E. T.
0:27.0	E. T. E. T. requires E. E. E. broadband. Content may vary terms apply.
0:30.0	I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier. As I often mention, perhaps I constantly
0:38.2	mention, I love a secret of adulthood, aphorism, Fable, Cohen, Teaching Story, or Prover.
0:46.7	One Prover that I often find myself repeating is, don't tear down a fence unless you know why it was put up.
0:55.0	Now this may be a folk proverb or it may be a paraphrase of author G.K. Chesterton, one of my favorite
1:01.2	Essias, who wrote in his book The Thing.
	...

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