I just finished reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (who surprisingly turns out to be something like a great-great-great… uncle of my wife) back at the time when his uncle on his mother’s side (Folger) married a Starbucks woman. (Who would have thought that the Folgers and Starbucks would be marrying each other in the 1600’s?). I found the autobiography to be mostly a rather charming book – although toward the end it got a bit too “political” in nature for my tastes. The book was written to his son as a way to tell him some of the more salient parts of his life.

There are a lot of “homey” phrases and things in the book, one of which particularly caught my attention. The praise is:

“Don’t pay to much for your whistle.”

The story behind this phrase has to do with when Benjamin was a small child, receiving a few coins for Christmas. Being newly “rich” with those coins, he rushed to town and came across a friend that traded (sold) him a tin whistle for his coins. He was very excited by his purchase, whistling all the way home and around the house until it drove everyone crazy and he had to moderate his whistling in the house. Soon the excitement of his new purchase dwindled. His helpful brothers and sisters pointed out that he had paid about four times as much for the whistle as he should have, and that if he had been more careful with his purchase he could have had a few other things as well. He therefore felt remorse for his purchase. Hence, “don’t pay too much for your whistle.”

I read that phrase a week or so ago and surprisingly find it amazingly apropos for a number of situations. It has broad applicability to life situations where we want something so badly that we focus on it too much, ending up spending more (money, time, energy, attention, etc) than the object of our desire is worth. Examples include things like wanting to succeed in business so much that you lose you friends, your wife, your family and eventually your life. Wanting to be liked so much that you give up your values to be part of the group. An example that Franklin gives is, “If I knew a miser who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow citizens, and the joys of a benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth, Poor man, said I, you pay too much for your whistle.” A beautiful, sweet-tempered girl married to an ill-natured brute of a husband has paid too much for her whistle.

Franklin concludes that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon us by the false estimates we have made of the value of things, and by our giving too much for our whistle.

At first I thought this just another kind of humorous bit of witticism – but have found it has changed how I judge people’s actions (including my own). Perhaps I should be a bit more charitable to unhappy people that have gotten there by unfortunately paying too much to achieve their life goals and desires. I hope to keep in mind the idea that there are some things in the world that are so tempting as to be almost impossible to avoid, causing us to pay a price that is too much for the whistle. We all have these temptations, so instead of judging them, perhaps I can instead understand a little better how that comes about, and perhaps have a little compassion for those that have clearly paid far too much for their whistle, perhaps paying with most of the joys and opportunities afforded to them by life.