Quote of the Week: "Always Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide"

The Blue Fairy in Pinocchio is not just a sweet and helpful magical being who grants Gepetto’s greatest wish; she’s also a source of great wisdom for Pinocchio by advising him to “be a good boy, and always let [his] conscience be [his] guide.” And in this case, his conscience happens to be the one and only Jiminy Cricket!

And we can see through all of Pinocchio’s antics and the trouble he runs into that this advice is definitely a piece of wisdom best followed. As a live puppet, Pinocchio faces a lot of different kinds of temptations from skipping school to “become an actor” thanks to Honest John, to being shepherded to Pleasure Island and taking part in all the indulgent activities. At each one of these turns, Jiminy Cricket visibly and vehemently objects to Pinocchio’s choices and tries his best to guide Pinocchio in the right direction. As the role of Pinocchio’s conscience we can see that Jiminy Cricket knows the difference between right and wrong, just like our conscience, or our gut feelings, tell us when faced with tough decisions.

Though it may not always be the easy choice, we learn time and again that our conscience usually makes the right decision. And it’s typically during the toughest times that we really need it the most. I can say for a fact that I haven’t always done the right thing and listened to my own conscience, especially when I was younger and wanted something even if deep down I knew it wasn’t right. I’ve given in to temptation before, and I’m fairly sure that’s something that we’ve all experienced. But another aspect that I find really important about listening to our conscience is that even if we don’t in certain instances, it’s equally as important that we own up to the decisions, acknowledge the results, and learn from them in order to make better decisions in the future.

I love that the movie portrays this as well. We see that Pinocchio makes poor decisions, and even goes so far as to lie about them, but these actions all come back to him in the end, until he acknowledges them and realizes the difficulties and necessities of being a real boy.

All of these facets are part of our daily lives and part of what makes us human. We all make mistakes, but more importantly we all can learn from them, and that’s the most important part of being real!