Louis Roney: Griping and other pastimes

“Griping” is an old American custom, much used and much respected.

Griping perhaps carries with it the right to see a condition critically, and even the tacit promise to improve it.

One could say that almost all teaching is a kind of griping. The teacher tells the students that they are “deficient in knowledge” and that he’s going to provide them a way to improve themselves. The teacher should, of course, be able to demonstrate how to do those “better things” himself. A singing teacher for example should be able to sing well and at least to give his students something to shoot for. English teachers should be required to speak the English language well, and to refrain from splitting infinitives. (Natch, these teachers need to know what an “infinitive” is!) A guy who gripes incessantly is called a misanthrope, and will probably not be invited often to express himself. The way people speak has a great deal to do with how much we want to be in their company as well as how strenuously we may avoid being with them.

As a freshman at Harvard, I soon got wind of the professors who were favorites, men who had a couple of hundred students crowding into each lecture. We stood when these honored teachers came into the room, and stood up and applauded when they completed their wonderful talks. Such a professor was Howard Mumford Jones who taught courses in American Literature and Victorian English Literature, both of which I took.

Jones was, of course, a guy whose talents let him make lecturing a form of entertainment as well as erudition. The subject people in Jones’ lectures were characters in a drama he was unfolding to us. They came alive, never to be forgotten, even when a guy like me thinks back to 1938, and a lesson where Jones brought to life Hester Prynne, wearing her Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne never had it so good! When Jones came to “Moby Dick,” he called it the “greatest American novel,” and made even us teenagers come to believe how a “great white whale” could represent the indefatigable “Laws of Nature ” over which man has no final control. I wonder what Howard Mumford Jones would have to say about today’s ineffectual efforts at “climate control?” The “lucky old Sun” may still have the last word.

Grousing is a human invention and human beings may have used it in the pursuit of most of history’s worthy goals. Grousing, at best, leads to whining – “to complain habitually and trivially.” To kvetch often opens the door to human progress. To kvetch is: “to do what you can do in the moment to make things better instead of worse,” which might not sound like much, but most of the time it’s just about all you can do in life. If someone has a “cause” he is serious about, he should “kvetch.”

Therefore, if ones ideal is to keep the city of Winter Park small, and aesthetically beautiful, he must kvetch. Remember, man often complains about his loss of memory, never about his loss of judgment. The worst thing one can do to a constant “griper” is to deprive him of his grievance.

• Procrastination: If I were a procrastinator I would tell you that I don’t have time to fool with this column now, I’ll do it “tomorrow.”

Some people are such procrastinators that they spend their whole lives putting off what they “ought” to do today, and “mean” to do later.

Living in the future is an unrealistic promise that lasts a lifetime and is usually never completely fulfilled. As “today” is the only day any human being can do anything, procrastinators are eternally dissatisfied with themselves. The only way out of today’s lies for procrastinators is to pay off in the “sometimes never-never-land” of tomorrow. The dictionary definition of procrastination is: “to delay or put off doing something intentionally and/or habitually because you don’t want to or refuse to do it.” If you find yourself acting in this way it might be good to give it a second thought — today!