Thinking Out LoudNot to be alarmist or anything but does the world seem to be falling apart more than usual?
Maybe my media diet of daily headlines is to blame. Chinese warships doing live fire drills off the NSW coast, just because. Far-right elements circling. Trump being Trump and Elon moving fast and breaking things, except the thing is the US government.
In my comfort (complacency?), history has long been an armchair pursuit. All that death and misery suffered by others, even others in my extended family, has been served up to me as a thrilling story.
In the process, I forgot that Australia’s post-war peace and prosperity was an unlikely blip, that people like me have been on a holiday from history for most of our lives.
Lately, I’ve found C.S. Lewis’ sermon “Learning in War-time”, written 1939, a helpful reality check. No, we’re not at war, but what Lewis says also applies to the discombobulating times we’re living in.
War, Lewis says, “creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice”.
In other words, life and death always hang in the balance. Not a cheery thought, I know. Nor is Lewis downplaying the gravity of war or saying that there aren’t righteous causes worth fighting for. But he threads a difficult needle: he helps us get clear-eyed about our mortality while giving us reason to carry on doing good work *if* our situation allows it (not everyone’s does) – because good work is always worth doing, even if it seems piddly in comparison to everything else going on.
If you’re feeling anxious right now, the essay is an essential primer for living in weird times.
This Thinking Out Loud was first published on Facebook.