I spent a year trying to live like the Founding Fathers in an attempt to gain whatever wisdom I could from that era.
It was an experience that made me grateful for many things.
It made me grateful for democracy, especially our rights, such as the First Amendment.
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And it also made me grateful for … elastic socks.
Let me explain.
During my year, I committed to the bit, as my kids say.
I devoured 18th century books about politics.
I talked about the Constitution with friends over tankards of ale.
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But I also dressed the part. I wore my tricorne hat (my kids wouldn’t walk within 50 feet of me). Every day, I put on my buckled shoes and my 18th century-style wool stockings.
Those stockings had no elastic, and they would slide down my calves and form a little puddle around my ankles. So I did what our ancestors did. I wore sock belts.
They weren’t even garters, they were just tiny belts that I had to strap around the top of my socks every morning.
I will never get back the combined hours that I spent putting on sock belts during my year.
It’s a small thing, I know. But that’s the point.
We take so many small things for granted. Like elastic socks.
Noticing these small things, and being grateful for them, has made my life much better.
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There is much to learn from the Founders' era about virtue, sacrifice and fear of tyranny.
But at the same time, in hundreds of ways, the good old days were not good.
They were smelly and dangerous and cruel.
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This book made me grateful we don’t live in the 18th century, a time when drinking water was often tainted. When you could die from an infected cut on your finger. When cutting-edge medicine included the "tobacco enema," in which a doctor would literally blow smoke up your rear end.
Consider long-distance communication in the days of yore.
I know that email and text-messaging have huge downsides. But at the same time, I don’t want to fully return to the 18th century method of correspondence.
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To pick up your letters, you had to ride your horse over unpaved roads to the post office.
And you might not even know you had a letter waiting for you until you read an alert in the local newspaper. It was stunningly inefficient.
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If you read the letters exchanged between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, you’ll find that much of it is fascinating and profound.
Yet a good chunk of the correspondence boils down to things like, "Did you get the letter I sent on May 8? And did you respond and I just haven’t received the response yet? Please respond to my question about your response, so I can respond to that."
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Despite all the problems we face today — and there are many — I’m thankful we have made progress as a society in so many areas.
John Quincy Adams once said, "Gratitude fills the soul to overflowing and scarce leaves room for any other sentiment or thought."
I try to fill my soul every day.
"The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning" by A.J. Jacobs (2024) is published by Crown.
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