D
djeter
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“We have no ‘right to happiness’” is the title of the last thing that C. S. Lewis wrote for publication and it appeared shortly after his death (he died the same day President Kennedy did) in The Saturday Evening Post of 21-28 December 1963.
That such a unique moral voice was silenced at the time it was most needed has always struck me as a great sadness. He wrote this within 2-3 years of his beloved wife’s death that ended a happy marriage lasting only slightly more than 3 years.
Although that was almost 47 years ago, this essay resonates with the voice of a moral authority speaking to the issue that rocks our world today: sexual happiness and so-called “prudery”:
“It is part of the nature of a strong erotic passion – as distinct from a transient fit of appetite – that it makes more towering promises than any other emotion. No doubt all our desires make promises, but not so impressively. To be in love involves the almost irresistible conviction that one will go on being in love until one dies, and that possession of the beloved will confer, not merely frequent ecstasies, but settled, fruitful, deep-rooted, lifelong happiness. Hence all seem to be at stake. If we miss this chance we shall have lived in vain. At the very thought of such a doom we sink into fathomless depths of self-pity. Unfortunately these promises are found often to be quite untrue…”
More here:
payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/08/30/we-have-no-right-to-happiness-by-c-s-lewis/
dj
“We have no ‘right to happiness’” is the title of the last thing that C. S. Lewis wrote for publication and it appeared shortly after his death (he died the same day President Kennedy did) in The Saturday Evening Post of 21-28 December 1963.
That such a unique moral voice was silenced at the time it was most needed has always struck me as a great sadness. He wrote this within 2-3 years of his beloved wife’s death that ended a happy marriage lasting only slightly more than 3 years.
Although that was almost 47 years ago, this essay resonates with the voice of a moral authority speaking to the issue that rocks our world today: sexual happiness and so-called “prudery”:
“It is part of the nature of a strong erotic passion – as distinct from a transient fit of appetite – that it makes more towering promises than any other emotion. No doubt all our desires make promises, but not so impressively. To be in love involves the almost irresistible conviction that one will go on being in love until one dies, and that possession of the beloved will confer, not merely frequent ecstasies, but settled, fruitful, deep-rooted, lifelong happiness. Hence all seem to be at stake. If we miss this chance we shall have lived in vain. At the very thought of such a doom we sink into fathomless depths of self-pity. Unfortunately these promises are found often to be quite untrue…”
More here:
payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/08/30/we-have-no-right-to-happiness-by-c-s-lewis/
dj