Louis Roney: How come we do us like we do, do, do?

I recently encountered the enlightening statement, “We don’t have to live this way.” What immediately came into my mind was, “Then why do we live the way we do?” 


The average person’s day is probably made up of many habitual ingredients, starting with that first cup of coffee. And I suspect that very little of what we do all day elicits, or even necessitates, much originality. Life is primarily habitual—and a habit we hope to prolong for a very extended time. 
The older we get, the further we are from the inventive energies of what made us get up and go in the first place. 


My b.w. and I live in a house we bought 33 years ago on our Florida honeymoon. Sitting in rooms that remain fundamentally unchanging sanctuaries, we notice little additions of our own that we’ve put in place through three decades to remind ourselves years later that everything is not exactly as we found it. Our stamp of originality was, perhaps, as compelling as Michelangelo’s, even if not so full of genius. 
Whenever I see a house being torn down to provide ground for building a new house, I am reminded that someone’s fond original ideas and dreams are being carted off in the back of a truck. New fond ideas will fill those same spaces when a new generation decides to express itself there in new architecture, new gimmicks. 


Nothing human lasts for long, and, if scientists are to be believed, even our sun itself is but a glowing star that will burn itself out into eternal blackness within a calculable time. All the stars we now see are suns with predictable life spans. In the end, will the whole universe be simply a vast mass of burned out ash? If not, then obviously new stars must be created as other stars burn out.


Existence, we are told, began with a spot of no dimension and infinite mass. “The Big Bang” theory proposes that nothingness exploded into everything there is, and originated from a very hot mass given the name we call a “singularity.” The time between creation and the explosion (“Planck time”) is immeasurably short, and forever shrouded in the secrecy of its own creation. 
Our light is life, and our life is light, and we live in a sunlit world that will surely outlive us. “Après moi le’ déluge” might better read, “after us, ubiquitous darkness.” 


When Einstein was living at Princeton, we used to hear frequent quotes. Lots of simple ordinary people were talking about “relativity.” The fact is that we like to think of things that are absolute in our lives, for this concept gives us a sense of security. However, Einstein made us accept the fact that everything is “relative” — that is, relative to everything else in the universe — and that nothing is absolute. 
The French have a saying that “life is change” and there is nothing for sure that is standing still in this universe where we, and all about us, are constantly on the move. 


My return to Winter Park after an absence of more than 40 years made me run headlong into the changes in this community where the lakes somehow remained pretty much the same. 
I walk down narrow brick streets where I once pedaled my bicycle to go to school or to buy some groceries for my mother. The streets are somewhat the same, but my God, the changes in me! 
 How many other kids have gone through the same schools I attended here, gone on to colleges all over the U.S., and live now who knows where?

About Roney: Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF 2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award (Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)