Today's Reading
TO EDWARD LOFSTROM: On his need to think less and to fulfill his daily duties with charity and justice.
8 March 1959
I very much doubt if any book, least of all a book by me, would much help anyone in the condition () you describe.
For a book can offer only thoughts and thoughts are not what such a person, perhaps, needs most.
One can argue against egoism, but then egoism is not his trouble.
* egoism; another term for egotism
If he were a real egoist he would be either blissfully unconscious of the fact
or else fully convinced that egoism was the rational attitude.
* blissfully; in a manner characterized by extreme happiness or joy.
You, on the other hand, suffer from a more than ordinary horror of egoism //which you share with us all.
And therefore, as you will see, [the thing () you need] is not to think more or better /about it but to think less:
to act unselfishly—that is, charitably and justly—and leave the state of your feelings /for God to deal with /in His own way and His own time. And this of course you know better than I do.
* feelings /for God to deal with
부정사구의 동작주체를 위해 쓰인 for God
부정사가 형역을 할 경우 부정사구의 수식을 받는 명사가 부정사의 목적이 되는 구조고
deal with 는 타동사구임; feelings / to deal with = to deal with feelings
But how to do it?
For [the very effort to forget something] is itself a remembering of that something!
* 부정사구가 단지 명사의 내용이나 용도설명인 경우 명사와 부정사는 주어와 보어 관계다
effort to forget something = effort is to forget something
I think, if I were in your shoes I should try to regard this sense of self-imprisonment not at all as a sin but as a mere tribulation,
like rheumatism, to be endured in the same way.
It has no doubt its medical side: diet, exercise, and recreations might all be considered.
And, though this is a hard saying, your early upbringing may have something to do with it.
Great piety in the parents can produce in the child a mistaken sense of guilt: may lead him to regard as sin what is really not sin at all but merely the fact //that he is a boy and not a mature Christian.
* piety; the quality of being religious or reverent.
At any rate, remember: ‘I cannot turn one hair black or white: but I can brush my hair daily and go to the barber at regular intervals.’
In other words we must divert our efforts /from our general condition or frame of mind
(which we can’t alter by direct action of the will) /to what is in our power—our words and acts.
Try to remember that the ‘bottomless sea’ can’t hurt us /as long as we keep on swimming.
You will be in my prayers.
From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Yours, Jack
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.