{CONCLUSION}
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN “CONCEIV’D THE BOLD AND ARDUOUS PROJECT OF arriving at moral perfection” because he wanted to “live without committing any fault at any time.” He undertook the course both for practical and spiritual reasons. In the end, he wrote that he “ow’d the constant felicity of his life, down to his 79th year” to the venture.
{ If you would not be forgotten As soon as you are dead and rotten, Either write things worthy reading, Or do things worth the writing.}
I decided to follow Franklin’s course of virtues as I stood in front of a magazine stand in a drugstore while I waited for a bus. I think that I had just bought some deodorant.
How did a Founding Father and a father too often lost get mixed up together in seeking moral perfection?
Before I get too far into such a weighty question, let me offer one more confession, one more mea culpa.
I lied. Again (for a guy who claims to treasure Sincerity so much, I seem to do that a lot).
I said in the beginning of this book that it would not contain any of the answers to life’s fundamental questions. After thirteen-plus weeks of somewhat virtuous behavior, I might say that I was no closer to understanding the nature of the universe than I would have been had I watched continuous reruns of Laverne and Shirley. Go back to “The Preparations” and you’ll see that I warned you.
The truth, however, is that there are some answers to the big questions—some gems of hidden knowledge—revealed within the pages of this book. Some you may have stumbled upon yourself, others you may need my assistance to uncover. Let’s have a look at them together.
First, and this is probably the most obvious, I am no Benjamin Franklin. No course of virtue, no weekly lesson in moral perfection, is going to make me (or anyone else) into Citizen Ben. He was an extraordinary man with extraordinary gifts. I’m an average guy with heretofore undiscovered gifts (I can juggle, my pencil sketches are okay, and I make a pretty good cheesecake).
That does not mean that it was a mistake to follow Ben. He invited it, in fact. He wrote of his course:
I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit.
Thus, though I may be no Franklin, in any sense of the word, for thirteen weeks I have felt his hand on my shoulder, guiding me through this course. I may not be him, now or ever, but after the thirteen weeks, I felt (and feel) a little closer to him. Actually, with all the false starts, mix-ups, and mistakes, the course took more than thirteen weeks, but what’s a few weeks when you’re seeking moral perfection?
Great Truth No. 2 is equally obvious. There is no such thing as moral perfection. Ultimately Franklin acknowledged as much. He wrote, in his own reflections on the course, that moral perfection was an impossible goal. Even in his failures, however, he saw no loss in the attempt. As a result of his course, he was a
better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it; as those who aim at perfect writing by imitating the engraved copies, tho’ they never reach the wished-for excellence of those copies, their hand is mended by the endeavor, and tolerable, while it continues fair and legible.
He ascribed various aspects of his success in life to the endeavor. He credited his good health to Temperance; to Industry and Frugality, his wealth. Sincerity and Justice won him “the confidence of his country” and his position as diplomat. To “the joint influence of the whole mass of the virtues,” he attributed his “evenness of temper” and “cheerfulness in conversation.”
{ Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.}
Well, I can’t give you that kind of lifetime assessment. Franklin had decades of hindsight with which to work. Of course, if you’ve stuck with me this long, I suppose you deserve some sort of postgame wrap-up.
This course began with a survey of my friends and family. It was meant to be a virtuous weigh-in, a starting point from which to assess the success of my journey to Benjamin Franklin’s moral perfection. Now, after the completion of the course, had my quest yielded results? Would my family, friends, and coworkers notice any change? Would my quest to follow Franklin shine through? I decided another survey was in order.
You’ll remember the survey of my mother and father, remembering as well that I am an only child. Well, despite their biased view of me even before I sought moral perfection, I decided to begin with them. Again via email, I asked them to answer my precourse survey, with another admonition to be honest. This was their response:
Can’t say we have seen any changes, how can you improve perfection, ha???
It was certainly comforting to know that I had not diminished in their estimation, but that was hardly helpful as a postcourse debriefing.
I decided to move on to my colleagues. I was not hopeful of any endorsements of Franklin as a life-coach guru from this group. Their feelings about the entire enterprise were decidedly mixed. Perhaps “mixed” might even be a little Pollyannaish. I think they resented, ever so slightly, being part of a social experiment, and who could blame them? Notwithstanding that, I decided I had to be complete in my survey.
For the most part, the answers were what I expected. No real change noticed. No glow of virtue about me. Nothing morally perfect apparent in my character. One answer did, however, shock me.
When I asked one of my coworkers if my attempt to follow Ben had affected her in any way, she said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, it did.”
I tensed. Was she about to say that I had driven her nuts? Or that I was a virtuous hypocrite? With a sense of foreboding, I asked, “How did it affect you?”
With the steely gaze developed over two decades of prosecuting some of our community’s most dangerous people fixed on me, she said, “With all this talk of you trying to be a better person, I decided that I’d try to be a better person, too.”
I was surprised. This was news to me. She had made no grand announcements of following Ben (or me) to moral perfection, so I had no idea I had inspired anyone. I was thrilled. “And you know what?” she continued.
“What?” I asked, cursing myself for an impetuous moment of self-congratulations and sensing the other shoe was about to drop.
“This trying to be a better person is %$#(*&! hard!”
So it is. So it is.
Next on my list of my interviewees were the girls. I had tried to involve them as little as possible in this whole endeavor because of their ages, but honesty is a gift of youth, and so I decided I might at least get some honest answers to questions about my character. Kids, as Art Linkletter reminded us, say the darndest things.
Simplifying the quiz was essential (would you want to ask a young child how good you were at Moderation?), so instead of asking them to rate me on the virtue of Temperance, for instance, I asked them to tell me how good I was at eating things that were good for me and not eating things that were bad for me. Darcy said simply, “You eat too much.” Remember, I wanted honesty.
On Frugality, Harper said I spent too much; Darcy said, “I don’t know what that means.” On Silence, Harper felt I did say things about people but they were mostly nice, and she thought I was very honest when we talked about Sincerity. Tranquillity was difficult to explain, so I presented it this way: “When I spill a glass of milk or something like that, do I get angry and run around the house screaming or do I shake it off and say it’s nothing?”
“Neither,” said Harper. “You say, ‘Oh crap.’ ” At least I had G-rated my expletive.
The rest of their answers were pretty straightforward, but on Order, Harper did mention that my closet was a mess. I found that very ironic given the fact that I had once lived in one.
It was on the animal question that I received perhaps the most honest and perceptive analysis. “If I were an animal, what would I be?” I asked (you would think I would have skipped over this one).
Harper thought about that for a moment and then replied, “I think of three animals: a hippopotamus, an elephant, and a rhinoceros.”
Bracing myself, I asked, “Why?”
“Because,” she answered, “they’re gray and round.”
She is her mother’s daughter. Darcy, by the way, said anteater. I didn’t have the courage to ask why.
Next to last was Chris Levan, he who had led me through this maze of virtues and ethics. Did he regard our efforts as successful, or was I a disappointment to him? We met, again, over a glass of wine at our local café.
“I enjoyed the experience,” he said when I asked him about our thirteen weeks together. He explained that much of his professional life is dedicated to teaching the theory of virtuous behavior, but that my stumbling in the path of Benjamin Franklin was about how the unpredictability of life alters theory. “It was a good reminder,” he continued, “that we can’t control as much as we think.”
I was curious to know if he had learned anything from the course. Or, more important, did he have any final words of wisdom for me? After a moment’s thought, he nodded and said, “Two things. First, anything worth doing takes more than a lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Second, none of us is as virtuous as we imagine ourselves; therefore, we must be saved by faith.”
Not bad. I think that was worth the price of a glass of wine.
Finally, I moved on to Michelle. Though this was undoubtedly the most important interview, it was also the one I dreaded the most. It was she who designated me sloth, and it is she with whom I intend to spend the rest of my life. Couple this with the knowledge, which you now certainly also possess, that she does not sugarcoat the truth, and I admit that I was more than a little nervous.
“So,” I told her, “I want to do that survey I did with you at the beginning of the course.”
“Why?” That was not encouraging. I persevered, explaining my reasons, and she agreed, though I noted more than a hint of skepticism in her voice.
As I went through the virtues one by one, she described me in almost identical terms from our first interview. I ended each question by asking if she noticed any difference in me with respect to the virtue in question after the completion of the course. “No change,” she’d answer each time.
Should I have expected her to notice a change after just thirteen weeks? Perhaps not, but a little encouragement might have been nice. I would have accepted a little insincerity at this point.
I had saved the animal question until the end for obvious reasons. Had I turned myself from sloth to stallion? There was only one way to find out. “You’ll remember,” I began, “that last time I asked you about what kind of animal you pictured me as and you replied”—I paused—“a sloth.”
“And I stick by my answer.”
“Wonderful,” I replied.
“Wait,” she said, hearing the disappointment in my voice. “I never did explain my answer. Sloth is not negative to me. When I think of a sloth, I think of a contented creature. I envision a sloth as happy, satisfied, and taking life one day at a time. I like sloths. I knew you were a sloth when I married you, and that’s why I did.”
Well, it wasn’t stallion, but I’d take it.
So that’s what others thought, but what about me? Did I actually improve through this course of virtues? You want the truth (admit it, you’re thinking of Jack Nicholson right now, aren’t you)?
Okay, let’s start with the obvious. I began this course by, unfortunately, stepping on the scale. As you will recall, I was a bison-like 250 pounds. I willed myself, at the conclusion of the program, to step back on the scale (despite the setback in the doctor’s office). To my surprise, I weighed 235 pounds.
That’s not bad. Accounting for breaks, extra weeks, and delay, this thirteen-week course took about sixteen weeks. Unless my math is completely off, that’s almost one pound lost per week. I think most nutritionists and diet experts would suggest that that is a healthy weight loss. And I did it without cutting out many of the foods that I enjoy. I might have been temperate after all.
Have there been other successes? Certainly my system of Order seems to have survived the entire program. I continue to monitor my emails and rid myself of unnecessary clutter with some regularity. That is not to say that I have become an Order guru. I have discovered, however, the virtue of organization. For that alone I am thankful to Mr. Franklin.
I BELIEVE I HAVE REINFORCED THE VALUE OF THE VIRTUES I THINK I already possessed in some measure: Tranquillity and Sincerity in particular (okay, Sincerity took a recent licking, and I almost slapped a defense lawyer the other day, but even Ben recognized that occasional transgressions would remain). Let’s be frank, I needed some Tranquillity just to get through the course.
Those virtues that I thought would be the most elusive were indeed so; some seemed almost impossible. I had the most difficulty with the virtues that were more abstract, the least with the practical. That may be a reflection of my nature or the product of a limited imagination.
What about those big questions, the ones to which I claimed not to be seeking answers? I’d be lying if I said I started this only for the fun of eating less and not watching television. The truth is that I was inspired by the words of Walter Isaacson (which I quoted in the prologue of this book). Here, again, is what he wrote:
It is useful for us to engage anew with Franklin, for in doing so we are grappling with a fundamental issue: How does one live a life that is useful, virtuous, worthy, moral and spiritually meaningful?1
When I read these words, I wanted the answer to the question. How does one live a life that is useful, virtuous, worthy, moral, and spiritually meaningful? I wanted to know for myself and for Benjamin Franklin and for all the people of the world who cry out for meaning and purpose in their lives. I wanted to know it because I think that the search for meaning is the one characteristic that binds all humanity: a desire to have purpose, to do good, to leave a legacy, to be remembered.
Remember the response that Peter Short (the former Moderator of the United Church) gives to people who ask him, “How can I make my life more meaningful?” He tells people to turn that “how” into a “why.” He wants them to ask themselves, “Why do I want my life to be more meaningful?”
I sidestepped the question earlier, but I am ready to answer it, at least for myself, after these past thirteen-plus weeks. I mentioned my grandparents in Chapter 12, “Chastity.” Their gravestone reads, “Life’s Work Well Done.” That’s why I followed Franklin. I want someone, somewhere, after I have passed, to say of my time that it was “life’s work well done.”
BUT THAT’S NOT IT COMPLETELY. I DON’T THINK BEN FRANKLIN (NOR I) was seeking only personal satisfaction and aggrandizement. Despite criticism to the contrary, I believe that Franklin’s course was, at its core, altruistic. Sure, he was trying to achieve personal success, but there was more to it than that. Franklin was trying to re-create himself as a person who valued community above self and charity over wealth. It seems to me that the fundamental aspects of his program of self-improvement, the foundation of virtuousness and the cornerstone of success in his mind, were found in his dictum in Poor Richard’s Almanack: “The noblest question in the world is What Good may I do in it? ”2
It is not a coincidence that Franklin suggested that he began each day of his course by asking himself this question. Selflessness, though not a specific virtue, is the beginning of understanding of self (that sounds almost profound; I must have stolen it from somebody else). The more we do for others, the better we feel about ourselves; the better we feel about ourselves, the more we are prepared to do for others. So . . . here is another “big” answer that I discovered—one more universal truth—from following Franklin. When I talked to Peter Short, I asked him why people want to sacrifice, to do good for others. His reply, a quote from Nelson Henderson, expresses this last truth more eloquently than I ever could. He said, “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”
Well, I don’t know if I’ve planted any trees, but I have for thirteen weeks followed one of the world’s greatest figures and felt his eye on me throughout the process. I have tried to be better and, in doing so, learned my last great truth. Once I articulated why I wanted to be better—to have a more meaningful life—the how came easily. The secret to being better is to try. I may not have succeeded, but for these thirteen weeks I tried, and maybe, for these thirteen weeks, I was just a little more stallion than sloth.
Go with Ben.
{I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.}