Franklin and perfection...

Be ye, therefore, perfect even as your

Father which is in heaven is perfect.

– Matthew 5:48 – Bible

It is surprising the number of times the Christian scriptures admonish people to be perfect.  Perfection, at least in the Biblical sense, DOES NOT mean reaching a point of spiritual enlightenment whereby one never makes mistakes, nor is vulnerable to error, but rather “…mental and moral completeness….” This suggests being fully grown, not invincible.

I’ve been reading the autobiography of Ben Franklin, one of the signer’s and architects of the Declaration of Independence. Josiah Franklin, his father, was married twice. Before the death of his first wife, Anne Child, she gave him seven children. His second wife, Abiah Folger, delivered ten. Benjamin was the eighth of that brood, making him one of seventeen.

There is much to be said of the remarkable man who, absent much formal education, taught himself French, Italian and Latin. He founded or organized many American institutions that we take for granted such as book lending libraries, fire-fighting houses, public hospitals, insurance companies, and literary societies. His inventions included bifocals, swim fins, lightening rod and flexible catheter, to name a few.

The topic here, however, is not the astonishing things he discovered or enhanced during a lifetime of boundless curiosity, but rather his interest in perfection. He was a Presbyterian, and while supporting the church a good part of his life, he stopped attending services, because he felt more time was spent on doctrine defense than enhancement and quality of parishioner’s lives.

Before the age of twenty, he took it upon himself to attempt moral perfection. Because he understood the difference between right and wrong, he felt it was just a matter of choice. He writes,

“…I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into…But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employed in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another…”

The result was a failure. Failure of the task did not mean failure in the pursuit. Because of this genuine and diligent attempt at moral perfection, he devised a system whereby he might accomplish the goal of a better-quality life. His mental industry led him to review philosophic writings related to virtuous life. He says,

"In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met with in my reading, I found the catalog more or less numerous, as different writers included more or fewer ideas under the same name…"

The following is the set of virtues Franklin determined would make his life better.

·     Temperance – Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

·      Silence – Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

·      Order – Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

·      Resolution – Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

·      Frugality – Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself, i.e., waste nothing.

·      Industry – Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

·      Sincerity – Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

·      Justice – Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

·      Moderation – Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

·      Cleanliness – Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

·      Tranquility – Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

·      Chastity – Rarely use venery, but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.

·      Humility – Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

From his failure to become perfect through the process of always choosing the right over the wrong, he determined he should concentrate on one virtue at a time. Having mastered one he would move on to the next and so on. To ensure his best effort, he created a book whereby he daily recorded and reviewed the specific virtue he was attempting to master. Understanding these things take time, he allotted one week per virtue. To master his goal Franklin worked in thirteen-week cycles, repeating them four times a year. Over time, the diligence of these recordings diminished, but not his deliberate attempts to keep them foremost in mind.

In the end, he writes that he was not able to perfect each of them, but the very effort of conscientiously working of them made the quality of his life immeasurably better.

Franklin’s experience and the results he achieved provide us a lesson in the value of deliberately exercising moral principles. They should be prized – maybe more so in this day and time.  They remind us that diligence, character and virtue count, not for pointing to other’s faults, but for strengthening ourselves…a mirror, so to speak, by which we reflect our lives.

Moving toward perfection is the key…accomplishing it? I can’t speak for you, but it is above my pay grade.

-ted

Forgetting much...

"Absent-mindedness is not inevitable,

but a form of artificially practiced

escapism.  For one’s mind is never

absent, nor able to escape.”

- Author unknown

As I headed out the door, she said, “Got your keys? Phone? Wallet?” A familiar mantra that is, by now, routine. There is a reason for this.

The event…

I got up early because I wanted to be the first to wish her a happy birthday. In fact, I had a fleeting thought about making the call just after midnight to catch her at the beginning of the day.

“Good morning, Ted.” She said.

Without another word, I began, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Molly. Happy birthday to you…and many more – with me.” You know the tune.

I smiled to myself as I expected a, "Thanks, hon. That was sweet."

She thanked me for the call and as gently as she could, said, “My birthday was yesterday.”

Yeah, it’s kind of funny, if you think other folk’s embarrassments are entertaining. I would have chuckled myself if someone had told me it happened to them. They hadn’t, and there was no chuckle.

Molly was still with her brother in Tulsa on her birthday, and as it turned out, the day after her birthday when I made the unrecoverable call.

I could make the excuse that I have been under the weather for the past few weeks, or that as time moves on, I forget more things. Yes, it is true, I could do that were it not for the decades of missed birthdays, anniversaries and other assorted events. There were even a couple of years somewhere in my fifties when I thought I was a year younger. I remember filling out forms that required my birth date and age in the same document, and I still had the age wrong! Yes, I could make excuses if not for life-long patterns.

Another event…

In 2006 I was in China with my late best friend Cheong Wing Lee and his wife, Sally. They took me to Beijing on an organized tour. We visited the Forbidden City, Great Wall, Summer Palace (despite freezing February temperatures), among other awe-inspiring places. The thing is, it was not a tour for Caucasians, but for Chinese. Everything was spoken in Mandarin. The only English speakers were Wing Lee, Sally and a twelve-year-old girl whose vocabulary was limited to a beaming smile and asking, “How are you?” I would say, “I am fine, thank you, and you?” With this repeated interaction, her smiles further broadened. My vocabulary was limited to beaming smiles and saying, “Ni Hao” (hello),” “Syeh-Syeh” (thank you) and “zài jiàn” (good-bye).

These tours were subsidized by companies that make all sorts of things from hand painted vases, to carved jade and Chinese medicines. These were not small factories, but large places with hundreds of employees. 

The tour worked like this. The bus would pull into a large parking lot. We would then be escorted to an open dining room with lots of other Chinese tourers sitting at luncheon tables. After a meal, we would be taken on fascinating tours of the specific facility. Each visit would end in fairly good-sized gift shops where one could purchase anything the place made. 

One Jade factory provided an opportunity to illustrate the dilemma I previously mentioned regarding Molly’s birthday – writ large!

There was an artisan making custom ink stamps. They were carved out of jade, about three inches tall and three-quarters of an inch on a side.  On the top of these stamps were animals representing specific Chinese Zodiac years. If you have eaten at Chinese restaurants, you may have noticed some of them have paper place mats with the twelve Zodiac animals represented by different years. You find your birth year and note the animal represented. I was born in 1947, the year of the ‘Year of the Pig’ – always good for knowing looks and a chuckle from my eating companions.

The artist carved people’s names in Chinese on the bottom of the stamp. Thus with an ink pad, one's name in Chinese could be placed as a seal to a document. I got one of these custom stamps for my sister, niece, Molly and myself. The thing about hand-carved stamps is that they are practically impossible to forge. This is because each carver has a unique style. That makes these stamps notable gifts.

When I got home, I proudly presented Molly with hers, 1954, the ‘Year of the Horse.’  “I thought you would really enjoy this,” I proudly said.

“This is lovely,” she replied with a knowing smile I have come to recognize. “But I was born in 1955.”

All of you, of course, instantly appreciate that 1955 was Year of the Sheep (Goat or Ram)! You could argue, it’s the thought that counts. But what does one do with an item lovingly acquired ten thousand miles from home, when it is just plain wrong. It is not like it's easy to find a Molly born in 1954 and give it to her!

Habits (even bad ones) take practice…

My life has been filled with these sorts of events. Some on a smaller scale, a few on much larger. Also, I have misplaced or lost phones, books, various pieces of clothing and other sundry items on airplanes, in hotel rooms and other public places. The only consolation is that it doesn’t seem to be any more frequent in these latter times than it was in earlier years. A curious aside is that I have almost never missed an appointment or speaking engagement.

As time has accumulated, however, there have been nuanced updates in the scope of Molly's reminders – the circumstances much broader than just leaving the house. When I'm traveling, she reminds me via text or when chatting to make sure I have left nothing behind. I always reassure her I have checked the hotel room, taxi seat, airport seating area and airplane. 

This has proved to be a pretty much failsafe system, except when it isn’t. In Singapore last fall, I took off my suit jacket during breakfast. After eating, I called Molly, and we chatted for a few minutes ending with her reminder to leave nothing behind. I looked around and assured her all was well.

It only took a month for that suit jacket to find its way back home….

ted

No predictions possible...

“All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision

by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred

to call the powers behind the Universe.”

– Arthur C. Clark: 2010: Odyssey Two

It was early in the morning, and I was reading as is my ‘day starting’ custom.

I heard a noise and looked up. Several large black cows were standing just on the other side of the back fence, giving me the eye. It was Tulsa, Oklahoma and I was sitting on my Brother-in-law’s back porch. I looked absently mindedly at them as my mind drifted to the circumstances responsible for bringing me to his home.

Mark and I don’t see one another as much as we might like. As time and gravity have taken their toll, traveling back and forth doesn’t often happen. He doesn’t fly, and it is a long drive from Tulsa to Tucson. He is also loath to leave his family of four of the loveliest ‘tailless’ Manx cats with a sitter, so he tends not to travel.  The "...mountain..." had come to "...Mohammed...".

Mark is a friendly sort of fellow, a quiet and gentle soul. As long as I have known him, he has been as consistently thoughtful as anyone in the constellation of my life. Additionally, Mark bears significant responsibility for the circumstances in which I currently live. I suppose to be fair; it is the life ‘we’ live, meaning the nearly forty-year cohabitation I have shared with his sister Molly Ann…a journey for which he played a pivotal role.

When Mark and I met in the fall of 1974, we were students and subjects in a nutritional research study.  He was an undergraduate in civil engineering and me in my first year of a doctorate. The announcement on the bulletin board suggested that for an investment of several weeks, subjects would receive three meals a day AND a one-hundred and forty-dollar stipend. Free food? Money? This sort of thing was music to the ears of a poor graduate student. I signed up immediately.

As it turned out, the ‘food’ was horrible. The ‘pre-project’ test food was ‘bait and switch’ for even worse tasting meals…if worser were a word, it would not be strong enough for the salty pink pudding we ate three times a day. Every calorie put in our bodies was custom tailored to our specific metabolic needs, AND everything we evacuated was collected and analyzed - everything.

Solid waste was captured in a humiliatingly make-shift throne on the top of a desk in a small open room. The receptacle was infused with nitrogen gas to keep our ‘material’ oxygen free. I get it, the image this creates defies adequate description.

Liquid dehydration was another matter. For convenience, each of us carried a small gym bag with a toluene spiked canister tucked inside and out of sight. For those that care and by now may be thinking this is way too much information, toluene (a benzene derivative smelling like paint thinner) was a preservative and if touched by any, shall we say delicate parts, burned like the hounds of hell!!

The above story is simply to indicate the way Mark and I met. It is foreplay for what in the end turned out to be the happiest and longest standing relationship of my life.

After the study, Mark and I became good friends – friendship that continues to this day. But this is a bit ahead of the story.

One Thursday, I got a call from him saying he needed some help. His out of town girlfriend was coming for a weekend visit. “Great,” I replied. “And?”

“Yeah,” he said. “The deal is that my sister Molly will be here from Washburn University in Topeka. Would you take her out Friday night?” After giving it too little thought, I said, "Sure, what do I do?" Mark told me to pick her up at his apartment at seven Friday evening. I had not gone on very many blind dates in my life, but I figured I could handle anything for a couple of hours.

At the time, I was in the neighborhood of my late twenties, happy to be alone, and completely ignorant of the potential benefits that a shared life might bring. Like so many things, the future was unknown, unpredictable and as it turned out, the result inconceivable.

At seven sharp, I knocked on the door of his apartment, unsure whether I might have acted a little too hastily in agreeing to this. I mean, what if his sister was a dud, and worse, what if she came back again and he wanted me to take her out again. These thoughts and a myriad of others shot through my mind between the time my knuckles hit the door, and it opened. When it did, there stood a cute young girl with short blondish hair, wearing glasses.

“Hi,” I said. I’m Ted.” She replied she was Molly and I thought: How bad could this be?

The evening was not awful, but it did NOT go well. I exhausted every tool in my social communication kit and for my trouble, got abruptly brief answers…little more than single word grunts. As I dropped her off and the door closed, there was a sigh of relief by both of the evening’s participants…both hoping we would never have an uncomfortable night like that again. (Later, I discovered she thought I would NOT be quiet long enough for her to say anything).

The next year, she transferred to the University of Missouri and lived in a dormitory right next to the building where graduate students in my area had their offices.  We saw each other from time to time on campus and smiled politely. Then for unknown reasons, I found myself looking forward to seeing her. It wasn’t long before what had been a terrible start, turned into what has been a long and satisfying partnership.

As I sat on Mark’s back porch watching the cows, more than forty-five years after meeting this man, it is still hard to believe he was unconsciously responsible for life-changing events for Molly and me. Watching those cows, I thought of so many people and places I have met and seen that hinged on a single and completely unpredictable experience or event. I traced back any number of circumstances in my life that would NOT have happened if the timing of the universe had been different…had I not said agreed to apparently innocuous requests.

I have long since stopped trying to understand the complex serendipity of life and the intellectually driven cosmos...its multifactorial process far above my pay grade. I have simply come to accept that it is and am grateful for so many lovely end results, the most significant of which was agreeing to that blind date.

ted