Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [14]
I had been, for the entire campaign, vacillating on my electoral choice. On Election Day, I was no closer to making a decision. By the time I came home from work, my wife had not only voted but told our two youngest daughters, five- and seven-year-olds, that she had cast her ballot for the local Green Party candidate (the Green Party is a small environmentally conscious party that garners no seats in parliament and less than 5 percent of the vote). She had told the girls that the reason she voted for a candidate she didn’t know, from a party that she had barely heard of, was that they were the only party that had not run attack ads. I resisted, mindful of Franklin’s dictate to “Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself,” explaining that the absence of Green Party attack ads was a direct result of the absence of campaign finances, independent resources, and, indeed, the complete absence of Green Party ads of any sort.
After supper, I took my children with me to the polling station with the idea that it would be an excellent lesson in civics. I brought them both into the voting booth and showed them the ballot, explaining how one marked it. At this point, I still had not yet decided how I would vote.
Harper, the seven-year-old, looked at the ballot and said, “Vote for the Green Party. They’re not mean like the other parties.”
Now my first inclination was to say that there were better reasons to vote for people—strong public policy ideas, powerful leaders, economic considerations. But then it struck me: there was no better reason to vote for someone, at least not in this election. Green Party it was. I voted for a candidate I didn’t know from a party that I had barely heard of on the basis of how “not mean” they were. It felt strangely right.
Bringing this all back to Franklin, I initially felt pretty darn good. First, I had been industrious (always employed in something useful), and I had enough humility to recognize that a child could come up with as valid a reason as I for casting a ballot. However, my pleasure at being virtuous suffered an almost immediate double blow.
As we left the polling station, Harper asked, “Is that it?”
“Yes. That’s it.”
“That was no fun,” she said, her voice tinged with disappointment.
Slightly taken aback but undaunted in my quest for virtue, I comforted myself with the fact that Darcy, the five-year-old, still seemed almost euphoric from the whole experience. She literally bounded to the car, not an unusual manner of stride for her. She maintained her positive disposition right up to the point that we left the parking lot and headed for our neighborhood.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Home,” I replied.
There was pause before she asked, “But when do we go to the green party?”
At least I had been temperate at the polling station. It was a good thing they didn’t supply snacks.
{ In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.}
The Struggle Begins Anew
My grandfather, used to years of waking at 4 a.m. to go to work in the mosquito-infested woods, would say about rising, “Put the palms of your feet on the floor and get ready to face the horrors of a new day.” Inspiring stuff.
Notwithstanding the “horrors” that faced me, I was slightly more prepared for starting my second day as an acolyte of Ben. I addressed Powerful Goodness while drawn to my full height (as opposed to my bathroom conversation from Day 1) and prepared to meet the day in all its virtuous glory.
Reviewing the results of my scorekeeping is a little like wandering through a store knowing