Coronavirus, Yes. But “Let Us Not Exaggerate The Novelty Of Our Situation” – CS Lewis

Stop advertising coronavirus in your Facebook sharing! “The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together” – CS Lewis.

CS Lewis, 20^th century intellectual giant and almost-Catholic prolific author & scholar. Remember The Chronicles Of Narnia?

Joei Villarama’s Facebook sharing 01Sept2021 is from CS Lewis (1948) (in italics):

“How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of chronic pain, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

Stop sharing scary stories or items about Covid-19 in your Facebook account! You are panicking the people, including yourself!

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways.

Anyway! Death has always been certain. Sir or Madam; CS Lewis says, we have already all been sentenced to death even before the atomic bomb was invented. And anyway, all of us will die.

It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

So scientists have added another chance for anyone of us to die painfully and/or prematurely – to a world that is not unaccustomed to such a death. Death has always been not a chance but a certainty!

The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things –praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts – not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about death. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

The first thing to do is pull ourselves together, gather our wits – and go on living. Let that viral bomb find us “not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about death.” Let that viral bomb find us “doing sensible and human things.” If you will: Pray, work, teach, read, listen to music, bathe the children, play tennis, chat with your friends over the Internet or play a game of chess.

“They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds!”@517