Anyway, I convinced Kevin to read C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy out loud with me. We are in the middle of the second book, and we read something that stuck with me. My mind keeps coming back to it, so I wanted to share. The premise may sound hokey with me explaining it, but remember: this is C.S. Lewis, so its got to be good!
Dr. Ransom has been taken to Venus (we don't know why yet), which is a world mostly covered by water. He's managed to climb onto a floating island but is hungry and tired. Here is the excerpt:
Now he had come to a part of the wood where great globes of yellow fruit hung from the trees—clustered as toy-balloons are clustered on the back of the balloon-man and about the same size. He picked one of them and turned it over and over. The rind was smooth and firm and seemed impossible to tear open. Then by accident one of his fingers punctured it and went through into coldness. After a moment’s hesitation he put the little aperture to his lips. He had meant to extract the smallest, experimental sip, but the first taste put his caution all to flight. It was, of course, a taste, just as his thirst and hunger had been thirst and hunger. But then it was so different from every other taste that it seemed mere pedantry to call it a taste at all. It was like the discovery of a totally new genus of pleasures, something unheard of among men, out of all reckoning, beyond all covenant. For one draught of this on earth wars would be fought and nations betrayed. It could not be classified. He could never tell us, when he came back to the world of men, whether it was sharp or sweet, savoury or voluptuous, creamy or piercing. “Not like that” was all he could ever say to such inquiries. As he let the empty gourd fall from his hand and was about to pluck a second one, it came into his head that he was now neither hungry nor thirsty. And yet to repeat a pleasure so intense and almost so spiritual seemed an obvious thing to do. His reason, or what we commonly take to be reason in our own world, was all in favour of tasting this miracle again; the childlike innocence of fruit, the labours he had undergone, the uncertainty of the future all seemed to commend the action. Yet something seemed opposed to this “reason.” It is difficult to suppose that this opposition came from desire, for what desire would turn from so much deliciousness? But for whatever cause, it appeared to him better not to taste again. Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity—like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day.
It speaks for itself. Ever since I read it it pops into my mind when I try to get more of something just because I liked it. I am realizing how much entitlement I feel in things that should be sweet treats or simple pleasures. I satiate myself when I should have a taste or meet a need. (Yes, mostly I'm talking about food, but it applies in other areas as well). I want to start enjoying and contenting myself in little bits. If that makes any sense at all.
