I never understood Ben Franklin’s saying “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” until I got to college. Then it made sense. With the exception of the engineer geeks who were in a lab all hours of the day, most of the folks up way late into the night were out drinking. Only the alcoholic’s alcoholic drinks in the morning, so most early risers don’t have anything else to do but to get work done. It covers the healthy and wealthy part, though the wise may be another matter.
John Adams, our country’s second President, idolized the much older Ben Franklin (at least until he got to know him personally). Adams conscientiously followed the “early to bed” paradigm. So when the two of them were in serving as diplomats in France, Adams was shocked that Franklin wasn’t following his own advice. Franklin was up to all hours of the night wining and dining Parisian society while Adams was at his post early each morning.
Who was the more successful diplomat? The dutiful Adams or the hypocritical Franklin? Franklin. Franklin realized what Adams did not - that diplomacy in Paris was not conducted at 8AM. Instead it was conducted in Parisian society, at drunken parties that lasted all hours of the night. So rather than blindly make himself go early to bed, Franklin was flexible. The best advice, even if it comes from our own lips, can’t be followed with blind eyes to the situation we’re in.
When I first thought of having a History Geek section I wanted it to be from my original thoughts of reading history - or as original as possible, for as Ecclesiastes says there is nothing new under the sun. So I’m embarrassed that this lesson is not something I came to on my own, but something I learned from an excellent History Channel biography of Franklin. The next time it’s on I’ll get the guy’s name who shared the above story; for now I can just give credit to “that talking head on the History Channel.” But I’m not too embarrassed. The lesson here is a good one and I’m going to follow it, rather than bad counsel I gave myself about obsessing over originality. Just because we shouldn’t always follow good advice doesn’t mean we must always follow bad advice.