Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [70]
I tried again—same result. Finally, I just told him the answer. As he thanked me, I sensed that he thought I was having some sort of breakdown.
Worse, perhaps, than my lack of success with Franklin’s method of communication was my lack of success at hiding that I was trying to use Franklin’s method of communication.
Near the end of the day, I stopped into a colleague’s office. “Am I glad to see you. I need some advice on a file,” she said.
“Shoot,” I replied.
“Remember that sexual assault file we were talking about? Well, the defense lawyer has said his client will plead if we ask for less than two years. What do you think?”
What an opportunity! I could feel the gentle hand of Franklin guiding me toward a moderate approach. I had a view on the question—a strong view. Ben would tell me not to simply state that view. If I wanted my friend to accept my position, I needed to win her over by making it her position. I would do so by using the Franklin Moderation method. My plan started with a simple statement beginning with the words “it appears to me,” or “if I am not mistaken.” Eventually, I would have her adopting a point of view, my point of view, without ever telling her that it was my point of view.
Things did not go as planned.
{ He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.}
“It appears to me as if you need to consider the positives and negatives of the deal,” I said.
Maybe it was the manner in which I said it, or perhaps I had a smug look on my face, or maybe it was just the weight of her knowledge about what I had been doing over the past two months. Whatever the cause, as soon as I had said it, she replied, “That’s the most inane, obvious thing I have ever heard. This has something to do with that stupid course of virtues, doesn’t it. When will this Franklin thing be done?”
I was beginning to wonder that myself.
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
I was taking a stand. On the week of Moderation, I decided to take up the standard that Chris has passed and I am riding forth. Franklin’s entire course (but for this virtue) calls out for change, for challenge, for chance taking. Chris has preached against Moderation. I have acknowledged a surfeit of“middle-of-the-road” disease. Why then should this virtue be anything different?
For the last five years or so, I have taken my birthday off for the express purpose of trying new things. I try a new drink, I try a new restaurant, and ostensibly, I try a new activity. The reality is that my new activities are generally quite mundane. The first year of my birthday/adventure, I tried ten-pin bowling. As I attacked this new activity, I learned three things: (1) I wasn’t a bad bowler; (2) the average age at a bowling alley at 11:00 a.m. is about sixty-eight; and (3) my idea of a new activity needed some reconsideration.
Unfortunately, it really hasn’t gotten any better over the years. My “new” activities haven’t progressed very far, adventure-wise. I haven’t taken the opportunity to pull the rip cord, either literally or figuratively. Thus, Franklin’s call to Moderation (and Chris’s call away from it) is for me a call to arms.
After my difficult beginning with modest diffidence, I changed my goal for Moderation on the day of my birth. I would jump from that plane (figuratively—it is far too cold here in April to take up skydiving). My new activity needed to be something more than it had been in the past. (I took a self-guided tour of historic buildings last year. Even the sixty-eight-year-old bowling crowd would have fallen asleep on that one.) The problem, however, was what to do (a problem exacerbated by lack of another virtue, Order, as I had done no planning and was thinking about this the morning of my birthday).
Over the years I have considered the obvious ones: skydiving (rejected for already stated reasons and a fear that my bulk and gravity