Louis Roney: The anti 'anti'

Human beings are born dissatisfied – constitutionally dissatisfied with the status quo. We should be circumspect as to what we are “against.”

This thought is to the benefit of car dealers and divorce lawyers.

The tiny grasping hand of a new baby reaching through the bars of his crib is already asking for something that is beyond his limited reach.

Dissatisfaction was often referred to by my grandmother as “divine dissatisfaction,” a quality that she equated with the drive to discover, invent or locate things that all people might want, need or crave.

Hunger and thirst are two symptoms of dissatisfaction that we feel regularly throughout life, as is fatigue. The mental thirst that spurred the human mind has led to medical marvels, as well as the wheel, the automobile, the airplane and rocket ships, the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and the humor of Mark Twain. Much of human knowledge is simply a collection of information garnered by dissatisfied folks.

When I got old enough to have a few marbles in my noggin I became conscious of a rationale that still influences my thinking. It occurred to me that all of us human beings are born with things we can’t change.

These innate qualities should certainly not be held against us by anybody. A person’s sex, height or lack of it, and skin color, are examples of innate qualities that historical mankind has had to rassle with throughout life. Even the color of eyes, or hair is often not a thing of choice, but of inheritance, and I am against mocking criticism aimed at any of these un-chosen wares. We moderns hear of bizarre changes people have been able to bring about through operations and medicine. In recent times people have learned of ways to change the color of their eyes, and, of course, anyone can have any color hair he or she wishes even orange, green or pink, or any combination thereof!

Some stubborn inborn meanness in people has caused them to judge others by their skin color, and this is something quite beyond one’s self-alteration. I therefore am very much “anti” saying or writing things that, in effect, diminish a person’s self-worth because of such qualities he did not choose and cannot change.

Our lives are busy seeking ways to change ourselves in other manners.

We are patently not satisfied with everything we got from mom and dad, and we have found many sly ways to change ourselves in even the most innocent of aspects. Lots of these changes we effect are purely momentary and we resort to them only for quick mental “adjustments.”

In the morning I want my cup of coffee right now! I may like the taste of the stuff, but I must recognize in all fairness that the caffeine jolt I get to start a new day may be the alluring factor.

Strangely, that morning cup, delightful as it is, is my only coffee of the day. It does the trick!

I’ve never smoked, but I can’t help noticing friends of mine reaching for a cigarette when they are tired, nervous, happy, sad, or otherwise affected. Nicotine seems to do for them a trick that non-smokers are totally unfamiliar with, and in most cases have avoided like the plague since the first time they turned down a cigarette in their early school days.

More dangerous still may be the graduation from cigarettes to booze and/or “pot” where youngsters meet up for the first time with marijuana, a drug that may be the doorway to all the more powerful mind-ameliorating substances.

Acceding to such ugly antagonistic dissatisfactions as sex-discrimination and anti-Semitism has led to unfairness in employment, labor unrest, and the advent of fascism, Nazism, and the World Wars, which have killed millions.

Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “to thine own self be true,” is much preferable, positive, and far less threatening.

We should, for our own sakes, not overlook the stimulation of good conversation, interested non-destructive argument, the pleasure of friends, the smell and beauty of flowers and the outdoors, love of animals, the taste of delicious food and drink, and the joy of lying down in bed at night to sleep well and replenish our energies for the myriad encounters of an exciting next day.