Coronavirus, Yes. But “Let Us Not Exaggerate The Novelty Of Our Situation” – CS Lewis
Stop advertising coronavirus in your Facebook sharing! “The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together” – CS Lewis.
CS Lewis, 20th century intellectual giant and almost-Catholic
prolific author & scholar. Remember The
Chronicles Of Narnia?
Joei Villarama’s
Facebook sharing 01Sept2021 is from CS
Lewis (1948) (in italics):
“How are we to live in
an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the
sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you
would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and
cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of
cancer, an age of chronic pain, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an
age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
Stop
sharing scary stories or items about Covid-19 in your Facebook account! You are
panicking the people, including yourself!
In other words, do not
let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir
or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the
atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die
in unpleasant ways.
Anyway! Death has always been certain. Sir or Madam; CS
Lewis says, we have already all been sentenced to death even before the atomic
bomb was invented. And anyway, all of us will die.
It is perfectly
ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists
have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which
already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance
at all, but a certainty.
So scientists have added another chance for anyone of us to
die painfully and/or prematurely – to a world that is not unaccustomed to such
a death. Death has always been not a chance but a certainty!
The first action to be
taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an
atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human
things –praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the
children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of
darts – not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about death.
They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate
our minds.
The first thing to do is pull ourselves together, gather our
wits – and go on living. Let that viral bomb find us “not huddled together like
frightened sheep and thinking about death.” Let that viral bomb find us “doing
sensible and human things.” If you will: Pray, work, teach, read, listen to
music, bathe the children, play tennis, chat with your friends over the
Internet or play a game of chess.
“They
may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our
minds!”@517
Comments
Post a Comment