Louis Roney: The good fight

A guy says to me something to this effect, “I’ve known you quite a while, and you’re combative.” That was in grade school. However it’s been about nine decades since I swore off physical altercations in favor of my front teeth.

I am proud to be “combative,” if you mean that I don’t run from a fight, and that I see every decision in life from the cradle to the grave as a combat between relative good and relative evil.

I think we can’t escape “combat duty,” i.e. the duty to employ combat for what we believe is right. That’s why I say my friend was right in what he said, even if he said it for the wrong reason.

I hope that I’ll “fight the good fight” until I’m defeated by time.

The main thing that concerns me is that I be on the “morally” right side in whatever fight I’m engaged. At an early age I learned that a person should “stand for something” which involves character, and ultimate love and respect for one’s fellow human beings. A good person never, under any circumstances, should take advantage of other people.

I was raised on “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” That was my favorite hymn when I was little kid. As a small boy I imagined that I would become a soldier in the army of the “right” protecting the helpless, and helping the victims of the unjust and inhuman. Jesus was a fighter for the right, wasn’t he? He threw the money-changers out of the temple. That was a pretty combative solution to a problem, wasn’t it? Was it that Christ knew that “My strength is as the strength of 10, because my heart is pure,” as Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Sir Galahad might have spoken of himself?

In school, I felt a keen competition in striving for good grades.

Such combat is with one’s self. As to football and boxing — even tennis — these were open combat, but games. Play to win, but to lose gracefully when your best is temporarily outdone.

Years later, when I heard Vince Lombardi deliver an inspirational speech at a banquet, I understood perfectly the meaning of his words, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Vince was saying — to me, at least — “You must keep your mind on only one goal: winning. Don’t allow yourself even to think of the negative, losing.” Vince talked of “the fear of success.”

Success sits on a lonely high perch. And armies of disgruntled “losers” coalesce to unseat the relatively few winners on high.

For four years I was a Navy gunnery officer in the Atlantic and the South Pacific. The Germans and Japanese had initiated war against the U.S. Both were intent upon conquering the U.S. —and both were committing atrocities against millions of civilians, women and children.

The return to civilian life was not the end of “combat duty.” The combat within ourselves to stand up against what is wrong is not ended by peace treaties.

I sang the title role in Gounod’s opera “Faust” many times in France and the U.S. Goethe, who wrote the great drama (from which the opera uses only a short episode) knew well the dichotomy of the human soul. An aged scientist, Doktor Faust, is tempted to renounce his lifelong moral principles. The Devil appears instantly at his side, ready for action! Faust barters his soul to the Devil in return for his lost youth and instant gratification of lust.

Robert Louis Stevenson, in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” embodied in one human being two diametrically opposed moralities. Call them God and the Devil, good and evil, positive and negative, desire to win and desire to fail — mutually inimical forces are in eternal combat in each of us.

The struggle between these forces within us is what Mark Twain called “the human predicament.” The fight goes on. We get better, or we get worse.

“Help of the helpless, O abide with me,” goes the old hymn. Such agape selflessness can inspire even the non-religious. For it is in combat in the name of the helpless that we can best contribute to “peace on earth.”

In Munich, in 1938, no one stepped forward to combat a menace that, we know now, could easily have been put down. Fifty million people died because a few devils in our civilization were not stopped when the right had plenty of might to “stand for something.” How about the Mideast now?

Long ago my quest became: “…The power to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

When deciding whom to vote for, be practical — you’re not going to get everything you desire from any one candidate. So, you vote for the guy who is closest to your thinking. But remember, not voting gives the election to your opponent!

One cannot learn without changing. Change means combat — internal and/or external. The end of our earthly combat is not ours to ordain. Meanwhile, the courage to “stand for something” is the rightful homage mandated by the giver of life.

Think about that when you vote!