By HERBERT VEGO
ANYBODY who has seen a hundred-dollar bill knows how he looked like in his time. It’s where the portrait of Ben Franklin sticks. Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790), principal author of the famous Declaration of American Independence in 1776, was known in his time as printer, newspaperman, inventor of lightning rod, book author, United States ambassador to France and politician.
Having read his biography, I remember a quotation attributed to him: “Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”
As one of the wealthiest Americans in his time he might not have done what he preached. But Ben Franklin had such a special ability to deal with people that we Filipinos of this generation could learn from him. That is why I am devoting today’s column on this man who has been my idol since my high school days.
While still a boy, so his story went, Ben Franklin – while filled with potential – realized that many of his traits and characteristics were harmful to his ambition. Some boys, awed by his family’s good fortune, were uncomfortable because of their notion that he was “aristocratic.”
And so he vowed to train himself on how to win friends and influence people and eventually wrote about how he did it. Who knows? Dale Carnegie (1888 – 1956), author of the best-seller “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, might have imbibed some of his ideas.
Franklin taught that while talent and competence at what he did was of paramount importance, it was often not the difference-maker in terms of success. After all, how many talented people have exploited their talents to the hilt? He noticed that many talented people in his time – such as artists and authors — had been surpassed by their supposedly inferior competitors in terms of public acceptance; they didn’t seem to have a way with potential patrons.
Those frustrated talents, Franklin observed, often grumbled about receiving before giving. It should be the other way around in the beginning, he corrected, if want wanted to gain the attention of a prospect. Happy patrons would not hesitate to run after their favorite service providers or merchants.
In the book, “Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Other Writings”, the statesman and diplomat tells of an incident with “a gentleman of fortune and education” who opposed his appointment as clerk of the General Assembly of the Pennsylvania House. Ben knew that this person could give him trouble later on. And so he aimed to convert an enemy into a friend. He wrote in his time’s British English:
Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him expressing my desire of perusing that book and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days.
He sent it immediately – and I returned it in about a week with another note expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility. And he ever afterward manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.
This is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says, ‘He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.’ And it shows how much more profitable it is prudently to remove, than to resent, return, and continue inimical proceedings.
In other words we’re better off making a friend than keeping an enemy./PN
