In early childhood I once fell in with naughty little boys behaving in naughty little ways, with no great evil resulting from our juvenile pranks.

Nevertheless my mother could see that first steps had been taken on a road that could in future lead to more seriously negative results.

She admonished me gently, noting that although it might seem easier to do wrong than to do right, always choosing the hard-seeming right over the easy-seeming wrong was the best way to live.

“Why, Mommy?”

In essence she replied that although I was too young to understand, she wanted me to trust her, and always to choose the hard-seeming right over the easy-seeming wrong.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered years later that no less a luminary than Maimonides, (1135-1204, Spain),¹ wrote in a way that closely harmonizes with my mother’s admonition:

¹ “Prefer the truth and right by which you seem to lose,

  to the falsehood and wrong by which you seem to gain.”

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For your wisdom, Mother, across the grave, respectfully, I thank you.