I've been reminiscing lately, and re-going over, parts of some of my absolute favourite book series, The Chronicles of Narnia. They're the sorts of books one could read a thousand times over, at least in my experience, and still come up with new insights, and old, wonderful reminders that provide a glimpse into the character, heart, beauty, and majesty of God. I could go on about these stories for a while, but that's not really the point of today's post. What it leads to is this: As I was in this C.S. Lewis vein of thought (and consequently, in a C.S. Lewis vein of internet procrastination), I stumbled across this quote from another of Lewis's novels, Out of the Silent Planet. I'll admit I've only read a part of this book (part one of a trilogy), but it seems it's high time to read more:
"A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmān, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. The séroni could say it better than I say it now. Not better than I could say it in a poem. What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then–that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it."
I think sometimes that memories are frowned upon as these fragile things, that are either of no value, being only whisps of a past reality, or else dangerous entities, holding the possibility of escape to something that is no longer real. To be sure, there is a fine line to walk here - we live life in a constant, ever-moving present, and so should not become wrapped up in the past... But there is a strange and appealing beauty to the concept of pleasant memories that continue to live, developing and affecting our present ... The idea of a "real meeting" occurring when you see how the initial event has changed and moved you, "what it makes in me all my days till then- that is the real meeting."
An important experience, a wonderful encounter -- it need not simply die the moment it ends. It has the potential to grow fuller and more meaningful as time passes, and as it influences what you experience in moments both now and to come. Of course, a memory may die too, and sometimes that is for the better. Sometimes time shows you that it was not, perhaps, all that special or worth the cost of remembering it to begin with, and you are really better off forgetting.
But "real" meetings, initial moments being merely a shadow of something more - I think that's a rather captivating idea.
