except on some rare celestial saturnalia of topsy-turvydom

excerpts from c.s. lewis' the problem of pain. it was extremely interesting and it really got me thinking. you should take the time to read at least the bold quotes.

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what we need for human society is exactly what we have - a neutral something, neither you nor i, which we can both manipulate so as to make signs to each other...matter, which keeps souls apart, also brings them together.

with every advance in our thought the unity if the creative act, and the impossibility of tinkering with the creation as though this or that element of it could have been removed, will become more apparent. perhaps this is not the 'best of all possible' universes, but the only possible one.

some comparison between the state of being and another can be made, but the attempt to compare being and not being ends in mere words. 'it would be better for me not to exist' - in what sense 'for me'? how should i, if i did not exist, profit by not existing?

on the one hand, if god is wiser than we his judgement must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. what seems to us good may therefore not be good in his eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.

but since it is abundantly clear that i don't, and since i have reason to believe, nevertheless, that god is love, i conclude that my conception of love needs correction.

i do not think i should value much the love of a friend who cared only for my happiness and did not object to my becoming dishonest.

those divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshal us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted.

this is the conclusion of the whole matter. god gives what he has, not what he has not: he gives the happiness that there is, not the happiness that is not. to be god- to be like god and to share his goodness in creaturely response - to be miserable - these are the only three alternatives. if we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows- the only food that any possible universe can ever grow- then we must starve eternally.

one is the fact that for about a hundred years we have so concentrated on one of the virtues- 'kindness' or mercy- that most of us do not feel anything except kindness to be really good or anything but cruelty really bad.

the very act of confessing- an infinitesimally hypocritical glance- a dash of humour- all this contrives to dissociate the facts from your very self.

the emotion of shame has been valued not as an emotion but because of the insight to which it leads. i think that insight should be permanent in each man's mind: but whether the painful emotions that attend to it should be encouraged, is a technical problem of spiritual direction on which, as a layman, i have little call to speak.

they wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives.

pain is inherent in the very existence of a world where souls can meet.

everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughs to god when everything is going well with us.

or as a friend of mine said, 'we regard god as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it.'

let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for the moment, that god, who made these deserving people, may really be right when he thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this must fall from them in the end, and that if they have not learned to know him they will be wretched.

the people never admire a man for doing something he likes: the very words 'but he likes it' imply the corollary 'and therefore it has no merit.'

when i think of pain- of anxiety that gnaws like fire and loneliness that spreads out like a desert, and the heartbreaking routine of monotonous misery, or again of dull aches that blacken our whole landscape or sudden nauseating pains that knock a man's heart out at one blow, of pains that seem already intolerable and then are suddenly increased, of infuriating scorpion-stinging pains that startle into maniacal movement a man who seemed half dead with his previous torments - it 'quite o'ercrows my spirit.'

my own experience is something like this. i am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contendly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens all destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. at first i am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, i try to bring myself into the frame of mind that i should be at all times.

if we think of time as a line- which is a good image, because the parts of time are successive and no two of them can co-exist; i.e., there is no width in time, only length- we probably ought to think of eternity as a plane or even a solid. thus the whole reality of a human being would be represented by a solid figure.

in all discussions of hell we should keep steadily before our eyes the possible damnation, not of our enemies nor our friends (since both these disturb the reason) but of ourselves. [this] is not about your wife or son, nor about nero or judas iscariot; it is about you and me.

' i reckon,' said st paul, 'that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.'

if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself- you would know it.

it is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want.

you may have noticed that the books you really love are bounded together by a secret thread. you know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words; but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life

even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of- something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through. . .are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain at best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you were looking for, watching for, listening for?

as our earth is to all the stars, so doubtless are we men and our concerns to all creation

their vision fails them and they cover their eyes from the intolerable light of utter actuality.

the frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say 'my tooth is aching' than to say 'my heart is broken.'