On Hope and Longing

In Chapter 10 of the 3rd installment of his acclaimed apologetic “Mere Christianity”, C.S. Lewis engages in a discourse on the topic of hope and posits, albeit indirectly, a few of its implications on man’s perpetual quest to ascertain and attain the meaning of life.

The search for the meaning of life is one that has occupied – and often consumed – humanity for what would appear to be the duration of its existence.  It takes on varying forms for different individuals.  However, the common thread is the perpetual sense of an emptiness and deep yearning within and the often futile – and sometimes obsessive – attempts to fill this void with all kinds of possessions, achievements, activities, and relationships.

From the time I have had sufficient faculties to logically process and evaluate thoughts, ideas, and emotions, I have struggled to make sense of the existence of a restless longing in my heart, an inexplicable yearning for a certain time and place.  Sometime not now.  Somewhere not here.  It is very difficult to describe in precise terms, but it feels like an infinitesimal black dot of emptiness inside that I can never fill no matter how or what I try.  I sense it constantly.  Even in times when I am genuinely happy or contented, I feel its painful presence lurking within and bearing heavily on my heart, a gnawing consciousness that I am not where I’m supposed to be, and I am not who I’m supposed to be; that there is something I should be seeking.  Something else.  Something not this.

I am a Christian, albeit a faulty and rebellious one, and have been a Christian all my life.  I haven’t always been able to stay on the straight and narrow and I have lost track of all the times I’ve deviated from the path and lived a very unChristian lifestyle.  During the times I would go astray, I would inevitably develop feelings of hollowness within; the farther away and the longer I stray, the deeper and wider the vacuum becomes.  Such an outcome makes complete sense to me.  The moment a branch is cut off from the main tree, it is immediately  thrust into the process of dying, and death, by its very nature, brings with it darkness and emptiness.  

What I found rather troubling was that even during the times when I am wholly committed to an intimate relationship with God, that little black dot of yearning and discontent still persists.  I am happy, yes.  Content, certainly.  At peace, sure.  But completely happy, content and at peace?  Not by any means.  I still sense that brokenness and inadequacy within, that deep yearning for something more.   Now, that boggled my mind no end. Isn’t God supposed to be able to perfectly fill whatever void man may have inside and isn’t accepting Him wholly into one’s heart supposed to make man complete?  Why then can I never attain complete wholeness?  Is there something inherently and fundamentally defective in me that is too great to overcome as to  forever preclude me from ever attaining that state of completeness to which I aspire?

My evaluation of C.S. Lewis’ discussion on hope enabled me to find the answers to my troubling questions.  After reflecting on the chapter quoted in full (except for the last paragraph) below and allowing its implications to fully sink in, it all started making sense.  Before I proceed with my reflections, I would like you to read the passage yourself.  It is rather lengthy, but I do hope you take the time; I assure you it will be worth your while.   I have emphasized the portions of the chapter I found most pertinent to the topic at hand.

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Chapter 10.  Hope

Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more -food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilisation as long as civilisation is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more.

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. “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. 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.”

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I have two primary takeaways from the passage above.  

The first and obvious one is that nothing that I do, achieve, or acquire in this world, nor any affiliation I establish, can ever suffice to satisfy that hungering void I have within me.  Whatever pleasure, satisfaction, or sense of wholeness I may gain from my endeavors are merely illusory and/or transitory in nature and but poor counterfeits of the real deal. Without the proper perspective, they will only serve to exacerbate my sorry plight as I keep on chasing that elusive thing that I can only taste for a fleeting moment but can never quite hold in my grasp.  Without the right understanding, I am doomed to either  a life akin to Captain Ahab perpetually in search of his white whale, or a life of disillusionment and apathy.

The second point is less apparent but can be readily deduced.  It is also the point that holds greater significance to me.  There is nothing wrong with me, a Christian, possessing the sense of emptiness and deep longing inside in spite of my spiritual state.  In fact, I am supposed to have an acute sense of it for as long as I live in this temporal world.  Having God in my life will no doubt fill most of the void I have in my heart.  However, even the deepest satisfaction borne of the most intimate relationship with Him while I am in this world can only be an approximation of the wholeness I will enjoy when I am able to commune with Him face to face.

The intense yearning for something else and somewhere else is not something that I should endeavor to rid myself of; it is, rather, something that I have to embrace, no matter how painful it may be.  I need to constantly remind myself that I have this persistent and deep longing inside me not because something is wrong with me, but because something is right.  I can never get rid of it no matter what I try; nor should I ever want to, for as long as I am here and not Home.  For this longing, this void, this emptiness, is simply a reminder that I am not meant to be here; that there is somewhere else I am supposed to be, somewhere infinitely better.