Ben Franklin’s Virtues – Humility

Pride goes before a fall, says a verse in Proverbs. And humility is the opposite of pride.

I recall from the Autobiography that humility was the toughest virtue, according to Ben.

He had a lot of accomplishments to be justly proud for. His inventions helped lots of people, even saving lives with devices like the lightening rod.

And he did not profit from them in financial terms, but had given them freely without patent. Manufacturers were free to make and sell these products to help fuel the budding American economy.

The last of Ben’s 13 Virtues:

13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates

Most people can associate Jesus with humility, but what do we know about Socrates? He was a Greek philosopher who lived about 400 years before Christ.

Socrates is known indirectly, through later writings by his students (including Plato and Aristotle). He ran afoul of the Athenian government, and was ordered to drink poison, which he did. Perhaps he became too proud for, paradoxically, being wise enough to recognize his own ignorance.

Interesting that Ben would choose to remind himself of Socrates.

It is a fine line between being confident due to one’s accomplishments, and being arrogant.

Given Ben’s other virtues which all speak to balance, it’s no surprise that humility made his list of virtues to practice.

Ben is a good role model even today, more than 200 years after his passing. He showed that dedicated efforts at self-improvement can move anyone forward in their lives. Though he never achieved perfection, he accomplished a lot. America as we know it would not exist without him.

• Ben Franklin’s Virtues – Moving Forward
• The first four Virtues
• The second four Virtues
• The third four Virtues

Ben Franklin’s Virtues – Moving Forward

My eighth and ninth grade English teachers passed out several college-prep reading lists, and I spent my high school years on a mission to read many of the books on them.

I made quite a bit of progress. One of the most memorable of these books (even after 40+ years) was The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

Ben was into self-improvement in a big way. He believed that, with hard work, anyone could overcome any obstacle to success. And he was smart about making money at it, too.

His education was mainly from reading. In his adult years, he started a library company in Philadelphia, so that he and his friends could pool resources to buy books, to make them available for all the members to read.

He was a lifelong learner.

Because he was so widely read, I have to think he was aware of the 7 Deadly Sins and the 7 Contrary Virtues, as taught in religion.

Whether that was his basis or not, he developed his own list of 13 Virtues, and he put them on a weekly rotation to focus on, each in turn.

In the end, he said that it was worth the effort, though he never achieved perfection. As I recall, humility was the one he struggled with the most.

I like to think he knew about flipping the coins over, because he focused on virtues (something to reach for) rather than mistakes (something to avoid).

We are better creators than avoiders.

Pre-Senior Perspective

I met a young person today who likes reading and books. Refreshing…. because I’ve also heard people in that age bracket says that books are dead.

From my perspective as a pre-senior, the nature of change is often interesting.

Pre-senior?

That is, anyone who’s in the 50 to 65 age bracket, old enough to be perceived as “older” by anyone under 40, but too young to get discount meals and other goodies reserved for “real” seniors.

Whether “pre-senior” will stick as a permanent fixture of the English language, it is no surprise that we pick up new words as time goes by, and especially as the Baby Boom generation makes its way through the decades. Even the term Boomer itself means different things to different people. It’s hardly a monolithic group, those people born between 1946 and 1964.

I catch both ends, being a mid-1950s Boomer. But I don’t spend much time reminiscing about where I was when Kennedy was shot, or when I first heard of the Beatles. I’ve got too much to do right now, in the here and now, working on my business.

More than a word, pre-senior has become status to play with, a different way to look at the world. In my case, maintaining focus on goals, and on being happy as a mud-pie maker, no matter where I am or what I’m doing: tedious tasks or the thrill of the hunt.

The pre-senior perspective gives the world a different twist. I’ll take it smiling, and have fun with it. Or in the words of that sassy one-liner, “Old enough to know better, but still young enough to enjoy it.”