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Most
of us find it very difficult to want "Heaven" at all-except in so far
as "Heaven" means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason
for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends
to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven
is present in us, we do not recognise it. Most people, if they had really
learned to look into their
own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that
cannot be had in this world.
There
are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they
never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us
when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first
take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no
travel, no learning, can really satisfy.
I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful
marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible
ones.
There
was something we grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades
away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may
be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and
chemistry may be a very interesting job:
but something has evaded us. Now there are two wrong ways of dealing
with this fact, and one right one.
(1)
The Fool's Way: He puts the blame on the things themselves. He goes on all his
life thinking that if only he tried another woman, or went for a more expensive
holiday, or whatever it is, then, this time, he really would catch the
mysterious something we are all after. Most of the bored, discontented, rich
people in the world are of this type. They
spend their whole lives trotting from woman to woman (through the divorce
courts), from continent to continent, from hobby to hobby, always thinking that
the latest is "the Real Thing" at last, and always disappointed.
(2)
The Way of the Disillusioned “Sensible Man.”: He soon decides that the whole
thing was moonshine (a kind of hard liquor
popular in the author’s days). “Of course,” he says, “one feels like that when
one's young. But by the time you get to my age you've given up chasing the
rainbow's end.” And so he settles down and learns not to expect too much and represses
the part of himself which used, as he would say, “to cry for the moon.”
This is, of course, a much better way than the first, and makes a man much happier, and less of a nuisance to society. It tends to make him a prig (he is apt to be rather superior towards what he calls “adolescents”), but, on the whole, he rubs along fairly comfortably. It would be the best line we could take if man did not live for ever.
This is, of course, a much better way than the first, and makes a man much happier, and less of a nuisance to society. It tends to make him a prig (he is apt to be rather superior towards what he calls “adolescents”), but, on the whole, he rubs along fairly comfortably. It would be the best line we could take if man did not live for ever.
But
supposing infinite happiness really is there, waiting for us? Supposing one really
can reach the rainbow's end? In that case it would be a pity to find out too
late (a moment after death) that by our supposed "common sense" we
had stifled in ourselves the faculty of enjoying it.
(3)
The Christian Way: The Christian says, “Creatures are not born with desires
unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there
is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing
as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I
find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most
probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."
If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."
