surprised by joy

Last week I read Surprised by Joy-Although it was not one of my favorite c.s. lewis books, his description of joy and his intellectual journey to Christianity is very interesting.
This is one of my favorite quotes:
"You will remember how, as a schoolboy, I had destroyed my religious life by a vicious subjectivism which made "realizations" the aim of prayer; turning away from God to seek states of mind, and trying to produce those states of mind by "maistry." With unbelievable folly I now proceeded to make exactly the same blunder in my imaginative life; or rather the same pair of blunders. The first was made at the very moment when I formulated the complaint that the "old thrill" was becoming rarer and rarer. For by that complaint I smuggled in the assumption that what I wanted was a "thrill" a state of my own mind. And there lies the deadly error. Only when your whole attention and desire are fixed on something else- whether a distant mountain, or the past, or the gods of Asgard- does the "thrill" arise. It is a byproduct. Its very existence presupposes that you desire not it but something other and outer. If by any perverse askesis or the use of any drug it could by produced from within, it would at once be seen to be of no value. For take away the object, and what, after all, would be left?- a whirl of images, a fluttering sensation in the diaphragm, a momentary abstraction. And who could want that? This, I say, is the first and deadly error, which appears on every level of life and is equally deadly on all, turning religion into a self-caressing luxury and love into auto- eroticism. And the second error is, having thus falsely made a state of mind your aim, to attempt to produce it. From the fading Northernness I ought to have drawn the conclusion that the Object, the Desirable, was further away, more external, less subjective, than even such a comparatively public and external thing as a system of mythology- had, in fact, only shone through that system. Instead, I concluded that it was a mood or state within myself which might turn up in any context. To "get it again" became my constant endeavor; while reading every poem, hearing every piece of music, going for every walk, I stood anxious sentinel at my own mind to watch whether the blessed moment was beginning and to endeavor to remain it if it did. Because I was still young and the whole world of beauty was opening before me, my own afficious obstructions were often swept aside and, startled into self- forgetfulness, I again tasted Joy. But far more often I frightened it away by my greedy impatience to snare it, and, even when it came, instantly destroyed it by introspection, and at all times vulgarized it by my false assumption about its nature. One thing, however, I learned, which has since saved me from many popular confusions of mind. I came to know by experience that it is not a disguise of sexual desire. Those who think that if adolescents were all provided with suitable mistresses we should soon hear no more of "immortal longings" are certainly wrong. I learned this mistake to be a mistake by the simple, if discreditable, processs of repeatedly making it. From the Northernness one could not easily have slid into erotic fantasies without noticing the difference; but when the world of Morris became the frequent medium of Joy, this transition became possible. It was quite easy to think that one desired those forests for the sake of their female inhabitants, the garden of Hesperus for the sake of his daughters, Hylas' river for the river of nymphs. I repeatedly followed that path- to the end. At the end one found pleasure; which immediately resulted in the discovery that pleasure (whether that pleasure or any other) was not what you had been looking for. No moral question was involved; I was at this time as nearly nonmoral onn that subject as a human creature can be. The frustration did not consist in finding a "lower" pleasure instead of a "higher." It was the irrelevance of the conclusion that marred it. The hounds had changed scent. One had caught the wrong quarry. You might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of. I did not recoil from the erotic conclusion with chaste horror, exclaiming "no that!" My feelings could rather have been expressed in the words, "Quite. I see. But havent we wandered from the real point?" Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.
Such, then, was the state of my imaginative life; over against it stoof the life of my intellect. The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side a many- islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow "rationalism." Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I though grim and meaningless. The exceptions were certain people (whom I loved and believed to be real) and nature herself. That is, nature as she appeared to the senses. I chewed endlessly on the problem: "How can it be so beautiful and also so cruel, wasteful and futile?" Hence at this time I could almost have said with Santayana, "All that is good is imaginary; all that is real is evil." In one sense nothing less like a "flight from reality" could be conceived. I was so far from wishful thinking that i hardly thought anything true unless it contradicted my wishes.
***
But a desire is turned not to itself but to its object. Not only that, but it owes all its character to its object. Erotic love is not like desire for food, nay, a love for one woman differs from a love for another woman in the very same way and the very same degree as the two women differ from one another. Even our desire for one wine differs in tone from our desire for another. Our intellectual desire (curiosity) to know the true answer to a question is quite different from our desire to find that one answer, rather than another, is true. The form of the desired is in the desire. It is the object which makes the desire harsh or sweet, coarse or choice, "high" or "low." It is the object that makes the desire itself desirable or hateful. I perceived (and this was a wonder of wonders) that just as I had been wrong in supposing that I really desired the Garden of the Hesperides, so also I had been equally wrong in supposing that I desired Joy itself. Joy itself, considered simply as an event in my mind, turned out to be of no value at all. All the value lay in that of which Joy was the desiring. And that object, quite clearly, was no state of my own mind or body at all. In a way, I had proved this by elimination. I had tried everything in my own mind and body; as it were, asking myself, "is it this you want? It is this?" Last of all I had asked Joy itself what I wanted; and labelling it "aesthetic experience," had pretended I could answer Yes. But that answer too had broken down. Inexorably Joy proclaim, "You want- I myself am you want of- something other, outside, not you not any state of you."

in moments like these...

There is nothing so depressing as being home on a saturday night in bed with the flu. Sweating, coughing, sniffling, with chills is a splendid mix of weekend fun. Covers off- covers on. Blankets off Blanket on.
And all I can think about are the two massive research papers im suppose to be writing that got me into this mess. Anxiety and cold weather are a sure mix to land you with a box of kleenex.
I have decided to spend the night listening to sermons- something I have rarely gotten the chance to do lately. Its sad how we get ourselves so worked up sometimes it brings us to a place were we cant do anything. I feel so useless but I guess it is in these moments of humility I realize it is through Him that I am strengthened in my weakness.

My saturday night looks very promising: a night of chewing Hume's essay "on miracles" only to spit it back out into some kind of pseudo analysis (with sublime's Santeria shouting in my headphones). And this is my life.
I wish I could find more contentment in the mundane everyday tasks of life instead of grasping for thoughts and concepts beyond my reach. One words rings over and over in my mind: introspective. I shall pick apart abstractly then methodically categorize into something that will help me cope and possibly entertain me.
My saturday night calamity: boredom.
I am so fast to judge others- to label them mindless and shallow. But I wonder...maybe there can be just as much destruction in just sitting around blogging. Unless I create my own manifesto and have plans to quickly dominate and implement it- my words are empty.
Life demands such a balance between doing and thinking. Unfortunately the latter plagues me.


I wish to feel "humanity"