A Grief Observed

C S Lewis ↗

Them as asks don’t get

Reality never repeats

We are under the harrow and can’t escape. Reality, looked at steadily, is unbearable.

Who still thinks there is some device (if only he could find it) which will make pain not to be pain. It doesn’t really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist’s chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.

But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unneces-sary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren’t. Either way, we’re for it.

For in grief nothing stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats.

The same leg is cut off time after time. The first plunge of the knife into the flesh is felt again and again. They say, The coward dies many times’; so does the beloved. Didn’t the eagle find a fresh liver to tear in Prometheus every time it dined?

Poi si tornò all’ eterna fontana.