Problem Of Pain

By C.S. Lewis • October 11, 2015

You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound 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; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw - but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realize that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. 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, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap of water against the boat's side? 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 even in the 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 are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it - tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for". We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

PREVIOUS STORY NEXT STORY SHARE YOUR STORY

Click Here For The Most Popular On Sunny Skyz

feel good videoThese Cat Reactions To Owners Calling Them Through Security Cameras Are Absolutely Hilarious

feel good storiesTeen Mom Shares The Note A Nurse Left for Her At 16 — Years Later, The Story Comes Full Circle

feel good storiesTaylor Swift’s High School Ex Had The Funniest Take On Her Engagement News

feel good storiesYes, A Screaming Hairy Armadillo Exists — And He Just Moved To Mississippi

feel good storiesAnniversary Gift Goes Hilariously Wrong — Or Maybe Perfectly Right

feel good storiesKentucky Nurse Saves Drunk Raccoon With CPR After Dumpster Mishap

feel good videoThese Cat Reactions To Owners Calling Them Through Security Cameras Are Absolutely Hilarious

feel good videoThey Noticed A Stray Dog Staring At A Toy In The Claw Machine, So They Won It For Her

feel good videoKind Man Rescues Puppies, And The Mom’s Reaction Says It All

feel good videoAndrea Bocelli Joins Queen Legend Brian May For Unforgettable Duet

feel good videoMom Shares Wholesome Video Of Stranger Making Her Son’s Birthday Magical

Chris Filippou 12:17 PM (3 minutes ago) to me