I’d like to share some thoughts on a passage from one of my favorite books. I’ve read this book a couple of times and each time I would read it this passage would fill me with great wonder and a deep stirring in my heart, but these feelings did not lead me to an understanding. I’m still only 22 (almost 23), so I can’t claim to have much of an understanding of these things, but I do think graduating college and moving to North Carolina has shed some light on what can be a beautiful way to look at life! I will attempt to explain….
The book is “Out of the Silent Planet” by C.S. Lewis (read it, it is amazing!). To set the stage (without giving away too much), Ransom, the main character, travels to another planet inhabited by creatures called hrossa. These hrossa are kind of like giant beavers, but more importantly they are instinctively morally pure. The following is part of a conversation between Ransom and one of the hrossa, named Hyoi.
We will enter the conversation at the point in which Hyoi is speaking:
“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hman [the hrossa word for man], as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. The seroni [another creature famous for its intellect and wisdom] could say it better than I say it now. Not better than I could say it in a poem [the hrossa are famous for their poems]. What you call remember is the last part of pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then – that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it. You say you have poets in your world. Do they not teach you this?”
“Perhaps some of them do,” said Ransom. “But even in a poem does a hross never long to hear one splendid line over again?”
[skip a paragraph]
And indeed,” he continued, “the poem is a good example. For the most splendid line becomes fully splendid only by means of all the lines after it; if you went back to it you would find it less splendid than you thought. You would kill it. I mean in a good poem.”
[two paragraphs cut out]
“And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back – if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?”
Memory is an interesting thing. It amazes me how my memory is not static over time. Newsweek published an article a few months ago about therapy for people that have undergone sever trauma, in which their memory of the event is actually changed over time… but this is not my point, just a tangent.
I find it so interesting to see what memories are brought back to my mind and which ones I dwell on. Sometimes it’s a day, a song, an event, a person, a moment, or even a look, but the recollection of it can greatly change me. I feel that even in just remembering someone I am drawn closer to them, and even though they are not physically involved in the encounter, it truly seems that the memory of someone impacts the relationship that I have with them today.
Basically I just want to say that I miss you guys and that throughout the day different things happen that throw memories of you to the front of my mind.
“When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it.” I love you guys and the memory of our meeting is growing, growing into something beautiful, something that affects me every day, something that I cherish dearly, and may we truly rejoice in this!!
