Someone recently asked me:
“What’s something on your to-do list that never gets done?”
I answered without hesitation:
“The one thing that stays on my to-do list is growing in virtues. When you think you’ve accomplished one virtue, you end up having to clean up another.”
Later that evening, the room changes.
Candlelight flickers across a wooden desk scattered with papers. A quill rests in his hand. Spectacles sit low on his nose. The air smells faintly of ink and ambition.
I sit across from Benjamin Franklin.
An inquisitive friend stands nearby and asks the question again.
Friend: “So, what’s something on your to-do list that never gets done?”
Me: “Growing in virtues.”
Franklin looks up slowly, like a man who has been personally addressed by that sentence.
He slides a small chart across the desk.
“I tried to solve that,” he says.
On the paper are thirteen words written with careful intention:
Temperance. Silence. Order. Resolution. Frugality. Industry. Sincerity. Justice. Moderation. Cleanliness. Tranquility. Chastity. Humility.
“I gave each virtue a week,” he explains. “I marked my failures daily. A very scientific approach.”
I lean forward. This looks exactly like something I would build in a spreadsheet.
Me: “And? Did it work?”
He sighs the sigh of a man who could harness electricity but not outwit his own nature.
“I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined.”¹
I nod immediately.
Me: “Yes. That’s it. That’s exactly it.”
He continues.
“I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining…”²
We look at each other in complete understanding across two centuries.
Me: “I work on patience and find pride. I work on humility and find impatience. I work on kindness and discover I am only kind when it is convenient.”
Franklin taps the last word on his list.
“Even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”³
We both laugh. The kind of laugh that comes from recognition, not humor.
Me: “Exactly. You fix one thing and another pops up like it was waiting its turn.”
Our friend looks puzzled.
Friend: “So… neither of you ever finished this task?”
Franklin answers plainly.
“I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining.”²
I add quietly:
“When you think you’ve accomplished one virtue, you end up having to clean up another.”
The candle shifts. Wax bends. Silence settles for a moment.
Friend: “Then why keep trying?”
Franklin answers first.
“Though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.”⁴
I smile.
Me: “That’s why it stays on my to-do list.”
Not because I expect to finish it.
But because trying changes me.
Franklin folds the paper carefully.
“It seems,” he says, “this is not a task to be completed, but a direction to be walked.”
“A lofty goal,” I reply.
“One worth the effort,” he agrees.
And then we both turn toward you.
Have you ever tried to “finish” growing in virtue?
Have you ever noticed that improving one part of your character quietly reveals another that needs attention?
Have you ever found that the work is never done… and yet somehow always worth doing?
Perhaps this is the one item that belongs on all of our to-do lists.
Not to be checked off.
But to be returned to, again and again.
Footnotes
¹ Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Part Two: “Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection.”
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Ibid.
Note: Page numbers vary by edition. All quotations are from Part Two, “Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection,” which appears in nearly all printings of Franklin’s autobiography.
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