This postI’ve been reading C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, for the third or fourth time, and wow, I keep forgetting how good it is. Just in the first twenty pages alone I’ve found five or six topics for new blog posts. And of those twenty, almost every page has something starred, underlined, or scribbled in the margins. This book is gold.
On my walk home from the Cougareat through the snow (I ran out of groceries, but don’t worry, I’m going to trudge on over to Smith’s once I finish this post), the excitement of having all these ideas to post about was almost enough to tempt me into writing them all today. But seven posts in a single day is probably a bit much, so instead I’ll space them out over the next few days. (That doesn’t mean I won’t write them all today, though. I just won’t post them all at once. ;))
Since A Grief Observed is basically about Lewis’s relationship with his wife Joy (she died of cancer, and in his grief at losing her, he wrote this book), many of these posts will have to do with relationships. I know, I said I wouldn’t blog about that for a while — sorry.
I don’t know why I’m apologizing. Oh, wait, I do. It’s easy — for me — to write about most things openly, but for the longest time it was really, really, really hard for me to talk about relationships. The only place I’d mention it was in my journal, and that was top-secret. When I started liking a girl, I’d never tell my family. Come to think of it, I don’t think that changed until I started college. Yeah, I know. ~sigh~
Now, though, I end up talking about these things more than is safe. Walls have ears, and more than once I’ve wondered if it might not be wise to shut up more often. :) But even so, relationships have been the last bastion of silence here on my blog, until relatively recently. And it’s taken some internal tooth-pulling to get myself to write about these things without cringing. I’ve only been able to write about it in generalities, abstracted out of anything that could be even remotely incriminating, watered down till there’s almost nothing left. After all, it just doesn’t do to mention specifics when blogging about girls you like — even if they themselves don’t read your post, someone who knows them almost certainly will, and word gets round. And things can get really awkward, really fast. That’s why the juicy stuff stays in the journal.
Anyway, the whole point of that was to say that I apologize for relationship posts because I myself am (mildly) embarrassed to post them. But I think I relish writing them, if only because it’s something I care deeply about. Probably too deeply. But then again, it’s good to write about things you care about. More on this in a post soon to come.
And now, after a long and convoluted path through the jungle, we arrive at the real topic of this post. On page 20 of my edition of the book, Lewis writes, “The most precious gift that marriage gave me was this constant impact of something very close and intimate yet all the time unmistakably other, resistant — in a word, real.” And at the very beginning, he says, “[H.’s mind] scented the first whiff of cant or slush; then sprang, and knocked you over before you knew what was happening. How many bubbles of mine she pricked! I soon learned not to talk rot to her unless I did it for the sheer pleasure…of being exposed and laughed at.”
I think I’m in love with the idea of the resistant mind.
Perhaps I ought to clarify. I don’t want to be arguing with my wife all the time — of course not. Unity is better than strife. But I get goosebumps of excitement when I think of how she’ll be something outside myself — “unmistakably other.” Meaning, she won’t just be a carbon copy of me, but she’ll be her own person, thinking her own thoughts (which will beautifully differ from mine in many ways), holding her own dreams and aspirations. We’ll be one, yes, but the differences between us will enrich that oneness, texture it, make it far deeper and richer than we’d have if we were exactly the same.
But it’s not just the differences that interest me — it’s the resistance. I want my wife to be unafraid to voice her opinion, to tell me when I’m wrong, to not let me get away with “talking rot.” I don’t want an echo. (This, by the way, is another reason why I hesitate to blog about relationships — posts like these always seem to read like the personals. That’s not what I’m aiming for at all, but whatever. ~sigh~)
Sure, the resistance can be carried too far, and then you get discord and anger and all sorts of bad things bubbling up between you and your spouse. There’s a subtle balance between sameness and difference, which is where happiness lies, at least for me. But too much sameness is bland and boring.
Anyway, I think I’ve dug myself a deep enough hole already. :)
