Just Peachy!

“There is no safe investment.  To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.  I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness… We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it.” 

~C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves~

I love C.S. Lewis, he can say amazing things with simple words and in only a few sentences; he also seems to be something of a prophet, speaking candidly to modern hearts and problems though he was a man of a far different era, or perhaps it is just that men never change and he speaks to problems common to humanity since the first morning of the world.  That is the more likely answer, he chose timeless topics rather than popular issues, much as the writer of Ecclesiastes did thus it still speaks to those of us who live at a distant place and time in a culture foreign as any alien civilization.  

I found this quote on the back of a compilation of some of Lewis' works and felt chills while reading it.  He could have been talking about me!  This was how I grew up, and I wonder how many others have as well and hardly even know it.  Some of my family still try and live this way and it is heartbreaking to watch.  Personally, I know we (my family) has been hurt so much in love that the only option seems to be burying your heart and pretending you don't have one, and then just keep so busy that you don't notice your emptiness and misery.  I am afraid this is a far reaching epidemic in western culture and not just a familial affliction peculiar to myself, I have no data to back up this supposition but just check your favorite social media site and observe a general sampling of what people put up: everyone is wonderful, happy, perfect, in an ideal relationship (or wonderfully independent), has awesome kids/pets/stuff/trips, and ever so many friends.  I wonder if Facebook might be a leading cause of depression among millennials?  But what is behind all the happy, perfect lives?  What is under that thin veneer of wonderfulness?  Are you the only person on the planet with problems, hurts, disappointments, sorrows, failures, and embarrassments?  Does anyone ever have a bad hair day any more?

On the outside our lives are perfect, on the inside we are falling apart.  But we can't tell any one, we can't appear weak or no one will like us.  But at what cost?  Our souls are shriveling that our selfies might smile.  We need to love and be loved, not that fickle, fleeting feeling of warmth or liking that is a distant echo of joy and modern society's only definition of the word, but rather the kind of love we only hear about at cheesy weddings with a recitation of, 'love is patient, love is kind…'  Have you read the entire list?  That kind of love is hard, but it is the only type worth having.  I've tried living without it and that is harder still.  Love hurts, but it hurts far more trying to pretend you don't need it, don't want it, and that everything is just peachy without it.  That is a short road to misery and loneliness, yeah life can get complicated and messy when we are real and vulnerable with others, but at least it is a life, rather than a mere existence.  It isn't really even an existence, it is a mortal version of Hell.  A little messy has to be better than that!