Sometimes it feels like you cannot have an impact on the problems you see around you. That feeling should not be listened to!
You, as an individual, can do so much to address the wrongs you recognize. Doubtful? That feeling of helplessness will lessen if you look to the lessons of the past.
Individuals like Benjamin Franklin, for example, should be be studied. Was he perfect? Of course not, none of us are. However, one example that can inspire us never to give up is when Benjamin Franklin was 71 years old, he accepted a mission from a congressional committee at the onset of the American Revolutionary War to go to France and negotiate a firm alliance.
Franklin wasn’t in the best of health, and at 71 years of age, he wasn’t as fit as he once was, but he was successful in his mission. Franklin sought aid from France for the Freedom Cause, and he got it!
History is filled with examples of individuals who did not give in to feelings of helplessness when they believed in an ideal or mission. Let’s learn our history and let it inspire us. 😊🇺🇸
This bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin is located in the Paris suburb of Passy where Franklin lived while serving as ambassador to France from 1778 until 1785. It is a replica of a statue by sculptor John J. Boyle located at the University of Pennsylvania that was gifted to France in 1906.
“A republic, if you can keep it.” -Benjamin Franklin
Those words answered a woman’s question after the Constitutional Convention ended in 1787, as to whether we had a republic or a monarchy.
This life-size statue by Hiram Powers, was completed in 1862, and has stood in the U.S. Senate ever since. Benjamin Franklin is attired in what the sculptor called a “continental suit” that was based on actual items from Franklin’s mid-eighteenth-century wardrobe. The source consulted for Franklin’s features was the great head of Franklin created by Jean-Antoine Houdon in 1778. A lightning score on the tree trunk Franklin leans on, is a reference to his scientific work with electricity.
“In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech ... Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man...”
Young Benjamin Franklin, under the pseudonym Mrs. Silence Dogood, wrote a series of letters to his brother James’ newspaper The New-England Courant, in 1722. The passage above is from one of those letters.
Pictured is a statue of young Benjamin Franklin, who came to Philadelphia in 1723 at age 17, carrying his belongings in a satchel and holding a walking stick. Young Ben had little personal property, no job, and certainly no fame, when he arrived. In the years that proceeded, that all changed 😉 The statue, dedicated on June 16, 1914, is located at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia that was founded by Benjamin Franklin.
Diana Erbio is a freelance writer and author of “Coming to America: A Girl Struggles to Find her Way in a New World”. Visit her on Facebook and read her blog series “Statues: The People They Salute” . Subscribe to her Substack Newsletter.
🤔 "... a Republic, if you can keep it."
🤔 "... a Republic, if you can keep it."