Every day is a new beginning

“I have often looked at that picture behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.”

Ben Franklin is credited with saying those words of the image of the sun coming over the horizon on the chair that George Washington sat in as he presided over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1789.

At the time Franklin made those comments, which were recorded by fellow delegate and future president James Madison, he was an old man. Franklin was 83 years old when the average lifespan of the time was half that length. Franklin died the following year.

Franklin was, to put it bluntly, what those of us who write for a living refer to as a “quote machine.” If he was in local government here, the Quote of the Week that runs on the opinion page would be renamed “What Ben Said This Week.”

Of all the quotes attributed to Franklin, this one referring to the rising sun on the back of Washington’s chair resonates most strongly with me.

At various points in the early years of the United States, the union was perilously close to flying apart into geographic factions. The constitutional convention was an attempt by inherently imperfect men to attempt to form a more perfect union.

Franklin knew the end of his life was near. He knew that the convention was either to be the end of this glorious experiment as a new nation, or a rebirth of that nation.

With the signing of the constitution by the delegates, Franklin chose to find hope.

I was thinking about this the other morning when driving into work just as shades of pink were lighting up the sky to the east. I dropped my wife off at the high school and was heading eastbound on Hwy 64 just as the first rays of light began to reflect off the metal dome of the courthouse clock tower.

Orderly rows of street lights and house lights brought illumination to the darkness below the courthouse, but above the heavens glowed with the promise of a new day dawning.

In the past several years I have become an early riser. Part of this is due to the practicality of having a lot to get done and being most productive without distractions. A larger part of it has to do with the inherent hopefulness I see in each dawn. Each new beginning is pregnant with possibility for goodness and joy.

Sometimes that joy and hope lasts as long as it takes for me to read the news headlines on the various news outlets and newspapers I read each day. On good days, a glimmer of that hope continues much like the hot coals in a campfire hidden by ash waiting for a breeze and some fuel to reignite into a blaze.

This week, The Star News marks 150 years of serving the people of Taylor County.The paper traces its beginning to just a few months after the county was formed at a time when lumber was king and waves of immigrants were arriving to the newly cutover landscape to begin the hard work of clearing stumps and picking rocks.

Those settlers and early community leaders were driven by hope — hope for new beginnings in a new land; hope that the foundations they were laying would be strong and endure; and, hope in the future of the state and country.

In the dark, it is easy to lose hope. In the dark it is easy to get lost in our private miseries, where even commonplace things become insurmountable obstacles that seem to be reaching out to trip us up and shadows form menacing shapes.

In the dawn, we find that the barriers were the Legos our children left out, the or a table shifted a few inches from its normal spot and the menacing shadows are a coat hanging on a hook and a pile of laundry to be sorted.

The new light of the dawn clears away the illusory dangers and problems and allows people to focus on what is real and what is really important.

I continue to believe that Ben Franklin’s hope in the future was not misplaced and as surely as the sun rises, our community, nation and world’s best days lay ahead.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News. Contact Brian at BrianWilson@centralwinews.com.