Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [10]
Armed, then, with some sense of myself, an ethical guide, and a homemade copy of Ben’s day planner and progress chart, I stepped, tentatively, forward. So began my journey—my humble attempt to follow a course of virtuous behavior invented 250 years before my birth. I had no preconceived notions of where this journey would take me, nor was I deluded about my potential level of virtuousness at its conclusion.
In truth, I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going.
{CHAPTER 1}
Temperance
Eat not to dullness;
drink not to elevation
OH DEAR.
I had visions of such promise with this whole endeavor. It would be a walk through the proverbial park. How tough could it be to follow a course of virtues that included things like Tranquillity? Sit under a tree reading a book and I’m already a master’s candidate. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the order of the virtues.
{ I guess I don’t so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.}
Franklin’s choice of Temperance as Virtue No. 1 was no accident. Temperance would be easy for a man who had already decided against excessive drinking or eating. But what about those of us for whom excess is a hobby?
I am not Ben Franklin, as we’ve already established. Temperance, for me, is not easy. This is not the virtue I would have picked to start things off with. I might not normally be intemperate in drink, but I am a candidate for a twelve-step program when it comes to food. I’ve been trying since I was a boy not to “eat to dullness,” and yet dull I am. If the idea was to start with a virtue that would establish a pattern of success, Justice or Cleanliness would have been a nice beginning. But Temperance!?
Of course, I was being too literal. In my friend Chris’s instructions to me on this virtue he warned against such an interpretation. Franklin’s view of Temperance, Chris indicated, is bound up more in his notions of usefulness and life’s purpose than it is in his concern about overindulgence. He wrote (I swear I’m not making this up) that Franklin would have regarded Intemperance as slothful. Slothful! (I should rush to point out that Chris had no knowledge of Michelle’s views on my animal doppelganger). Could this be just a coincidental use of the word by Chris? Would Franklin have actually used that word?
It turns out he did. Over and over again. He wrote, apparently, things like: “Diligence overcomes difficulties, sloth makes them,” and “Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry, all things easy.”
Whoa. Franklin abhorred sloth; I am, according to my wife, a sloth. I found more Franklin sloth quotes. Not surprisingly, none of them were in favor of it. I felt Franklin fixing me with his steely gaze across almost three hundred years of virtuous history. It was an inauspicious beginning, but let us return to Temperance.
The drinking I didn’t anticipate to be a problem. I have a weekend beer and occasionally a drink after work on Friday with my coworkers, but except for a yearly golf trip and an annual get-together with work colleagues, I almost never drink to elevation. Of course, in college I majored in drinking to elevation, with a minor in leering, but I’m a long way from those days.
Food, on the other hand, is my nemesis. Ahab had his whale (once again, that’s a little Freudian), Superman his Lex Luthor. I have midnight snacks and trans fats. I am the “before” picture in the advertising campaign for exercise programs—the one that women at high school reunions are relieved “got away.” My daughters call me “the Big Fat Teddy Bear.” Clearly they have inherited their mother’s tact.
Lest you think my dimensions are a recent problem, let me disabuse you of that notion. My weight is no middle-age albatross, shot with