C.S. Lewis, in his diabolically wonderful The Screwtape Letters, discusses the Law of Undulation, which I think should be taught in schools. They were still preaching Freud when I took Psychology (yeah, I'm old), but I think Lewis has far more to say on human behavior and cognition than all of the Psychology professors in all of Western academia combined. For one thing, he's not crazy or even delusional. I have often wondered how modern psychology can even function or help individuals, being either completely indifferent to or overtly skeptical of such a concept as the soul. We are merely lumps of animate matter and all our psychoses can be boiled down to some chemical deficit or other. Or not. If your mind is sick, it probably has some impact on your soul (and vice versa), but if we treat one and pretend the other doesn't exist, aren't we only fixing part of the problem and dooming ourselves to failure?
Anywho, I'm getting way off topic. The Law of Undulation, as summed up by Lewis (er, Uncle Screwtape) is as follows: "Humans are amphibians--half spirit and half animal…As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation--the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks…as long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty…" It would be a grand thing if we had learned this from the cradle, for as a modern Westerner, at least in America, you are told that life is always wonderful and exciting and perfect, and if it isn't, there's probably a medication for that.
The whole book is a treasure trove of insight into human behavior, and why we do the things we do and very much worth a read or three. This little section was brought to the fore as I stood staring out the window at a bright, cool, sunshiny fall morning, determined that life is going to be different from here on out. My past is no longer going to dictate my future. Then it suddenly occurred to me that sometime, perhaps even tonight, I may very soon be collapsed in a weeping heap over things that happened 20 years ago, yet the pain is so deep and so acute that it still has not gone away. What of my resolve of this very morning? Where is my self control? My dignity? Then I can smile and laugh at myself and understand that this is what it is to be human, to be fragile, and breakable, yet beautiful even in my wretchedness. I can struggle, I can cry, I can fail, I can doubt, yet ever can I get back up and get on with life, unashamed that I am not perfect every moment of every day, nor will I ever be, this side of time at least.
So I can rejoice in the good times, cry when I must, but ever knowing a brighter morning is coming and joy with it. What can these men solely of science offer? A pill? (This is not to say that there are not legitimate medical conditions that need to be treated with medication, but rather that we in the West have come to see 'a pill' as an answer to everything, including the deepest yearnings of the soul). Sometimes a pill just is not enough and we must remember the so called folly of the ancients: that we are not merely lumps of crude matter (to paraphrase Yoda) but something so much more.
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