Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [71]
I didn’t.
Figure something out, that is.
I should have considered my options in advance, done some research, made arrangements for something spectacular. I didn’t. No airplanes, no car racing, no derring-do at all. Undoubtedly, my lack of splashy new activity was a product not just of my lack of planning but also of my Moderation. Had I thought about this in advance, had I done some planning, would I have done something irresponsible? Probably not. I would have thought of my children and how they needed a father, or I would have considered the foolhardiness of making some expense for no purpose. I would have been moderate.
In the end, my adventure—my new activity—made bowling look positively extreme. I simply wandered around town looking for anything I had not done before (within acceptable risk limits). I went into a store I had never visited, ate at restaurants that I had previously shunned, and had a drink previously untested (just one, even though I was taking the bus). Hardly a blow struck for living life to the fullest.
Chris was disappointed. Ben, I suspect, would also view this as a failure. He would just put it in moderate terms.
There’s always next year.
As long as I’m careful.
A Moderate Failure
I’m not sure if I failed miserably or succeeded completely. I had really done nothing for the week of Moderation.
Well, that’s not true. I had been absolutely moderate. I lived my life the way that I live my life every week. I followed my daily routine to a tee, avoiding extremes and forbearing resenting injuries. I suppose, then, that I had been moderate. Moderation has been, as usual, my watchword.
Why, then, did I feel like a virtuous failure? Did Ben envision mediocrity as a goal?
Maybe. Maybe Franklin was simply putting a metaphorical brake on himself during his own virtuous journey.
Remember Ben was a believer in the common person. He believed in advancement by achievement. In Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, Walter Isaacson explains the difference between Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson believed in a natural aristocracy, while Franklin believed in a meritocracy. He believed in what he called the “middling” people”3 He believed in coming up from the ranks, so to speak. His founding of what would become the University of Pennsylvania was, in part, an attempt to elevate people from all walks of life who wanted to better themselves.4
Maybe all of the change that he was attempting to facilitate in his own course of virtue led to the occasional episode of disengagement. Rush ahead too far from the pack and realize that you are in the wilderness on your own. Maybe Franklin, by advocating Moderation, was just trying to stay within a reasonable distance of the pack—to keep company with his middling people.
Whatever Ben’s motivations, I have been the epitome of Moderation . It hasn’t been particularly fun. No bumps and twists this week, just predictability, mediocrity, and acquiescence.
It was safe, though, and no one got hurt.
I am Mr. In-Between.
Sigh.
MODERATION
{CHAPTER 10}
Cleanliness
Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation
I ONCE LIVED IN A CLOSET.
I tell you this because you would think that Cleanliness would be the one virtue of Franklin’s about which there could be no controversy, no question of its efficacy. Undoubtedly in eighteenth-century America, personal cleanliness remained an issue of some debate; in the world’s great cities, unsanitary conditions led to disease and even social unrest. But we, the denizens
{ Clean your finger before you point at my spots.}
of the developed world in thetwenty-first-century, are über-clean. Too clean perhaps. According to some researchers, too much cleanliness is hindering the immune systems of people in wealthy countries.
Thus my closet story. It may help explain my low incidence