Life Passes By While Waiting For A Perfect Moment That Never Comes
C.S. Lewis’s timely advice on postponing today for an ideal tomorrow
“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.”
— C.S. Lewis, Learning In War Time
Over the past view years, I’ve noticed a remarkable change in the world, and not for the good. But it was hard to see until the pandemic lockdowns were in full swing.
I won’t debate here whether this was a good or bad idea, but it did utterly surprise me how some almost joyfully locked themselves away. Happily postponed their life for months, or maybe years with a smile on their face. Then, I realized this was just a symptom of something deeper.
For years now people have been waiting longer to get married, have kids, and move out of their parent’s house. Teens are waiting longer to get driver’s licenses. The BBC even penned an article claiming adolescence now extends from ten to twenty-four.
You’ve likely met some extending it way beyond this.
It’s like we’re living in a generational postponement. While some may claim it’s an entire civilization shirking on their duty, I don’t think it’s this nefarious or dark. Most of these “postponers” just think the present is an inconvenient time for various reasons.
The Earth is going to burn to a crisp
The economy is bad, or things are unaffordable
The world is too chaotic
Or they personally think they’re not ready to tackle this or that life endeavor
However, you can’t make a statement about the present without perspective from the past.
In 1939, C.S. Lewis and the faculty at Oxford faced a similar dilemma. On the verge of World War II, many on the staff of the college wondered if education should continue during this possible international emergency.
Lewis answered their question, and the future questions our postponement generation have in a speech called Learning in Wartime. It starts with the “unique time and troubles” stopping us.
Wartime Is Not Unique, And Normal Is Never Normal
“As students, you will be expected to make yourselves…into philosophers, scientists, scholars, critics, or historians. And at first sight this seems to be an odd thing to do during a great war...Is it not like fiddling while Rome burns?”
— C.S. Lewis, Learning In War Time
Lewis claimed the upcoming war wasn’t unique in its chaos, it just worked to focus everyone’s eyes on the unsettled world around them. Even the most tranquil times in our memory tend to be full of alarms and problems, which may make many postpone less than critical functions. According to Lewis:
“Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes.”
He explains insects would hide in their hive, and just focus on survival. But we’re not bees or ants.
We produce math formulas in besieged cities, argue about the nature of life in prison cells, tell jokes while in life-threatening situations, talk about sports while on our way to battle, and even the Spartans combed “their hair at Thermopylae.”
It’s not bravado, or showiness, it’s just what we do as humans.
Lewis says he also found something similar in both religion and war. The former asks how you can waste your time doing “frivolous things” that don’t center on getting closer to heaven, while the latter asks the same about spending time on things besides winning the war.
The author explains he spends a lot of time doing the same activities after he became religious as he did before. Lewis also says during his time in the first World War, the closer you got to the frontlines, the less the soldiers talked about the campaign.
In his own words, “Neither conversion nor enlistment in the army is really going to obliterate our human life. Christians and soldiers are still men.”
Moreover, if you ignore life’s natural and good satisfactions, you’ll replace them with something much less healthy. Lewis then identifies the four issues causing our pause, and remedies for fighting off the “nerves and emotions” which lead you into delay.
The First Three Causes And Solutions For “Postponers”
Lewis picks out a trio of causes which makes humanity push things off to a never-coming tomorrow: excitement, frustration, and fear.
In his speech, he uses the “excitement” of the war as an example of a continuous distraction, which prevents you from focusing on other things. But any excitement can take this place. In fact, he says we often go out of our way to find distractions to pull us away from the world.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be a war, pandemic, economic depression, or a breakup. It could be a celebrity divorce trial or drama. While no one can stop “excitement,” we can notice it as it occurs, and keep focused on closer things.
The next is frustration or “the feeling that we shall not have time to finish.” It’s a sense we’re too late to be a beginner at this stage of our life, and there’s also a mixed sense that happiness can be put off till later. Lewis warns “never commit your virtue or happiness to the future.”
It’s good to plan for later, but don’t let those goals bury all the beauty and good the “now” can provide. And this leads us to fear.
Lewis says many things can scare us: war, failure, pain, among other things. Yet we’ll all face the ultimate failure — death. These bad moments are a blessing that reminds us of our mortality.
Furthermore, they show us that Earth can’t be turned into heaven. Struggle is inevitable. Our now, whether it be today, or years from now, will never be ideal. Fear will always exist. Finally, Lewis drops one final hint for conquering the never-ending human desire for delay.
The Past And Perspective As A Counterweight
Finally, Lewis says we need “intimate knowledge of the past,” not that history itself is going to give you a magical answer to all life’s troubles. But it will show you the general assumptions of people change. Similar as our assumptions of our day will in the future.
The person who travels widely won’t be “deceived” by the local folk wisdom of their community. Likewise Lewis says:
“The scholar that has lived in many times is…in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.”
This knowledge of the past works as an ultimate counterweight to the mob of voices giving their opinion of our now. With this lesson from Lewis, let’s travel back to our current world.
Advice For The Delay Generation
You can’t help but feel it. The world around us thinks now is a bad time for…just about everything. But this opinion isn’t novel. It’s just taking an innate human instinct, and expanding on it so much we have major media outlets telling us adolescence now extends to twenty-four.
Humanity has always thought “now” is inconvenient, but there’s never been a time the Earth has been free from worry. As Lewis reminds us, if our species waited for an ideal time, none of the beauty, culture, and creativity which exists in our world would be here for us to enjoy.
The excitement, frustration, and fear you’re experiencing were felt by the WWII generation, and the WWI generation before. Not to mention endless generations before that.
With some knowledge of the past, you can see it clearly. This perspective can help you navigate the usual voices of our time claiming things have never been worse and telling you to delay. This makes Lewis’s message of his day still relevant in ours.
Life passes by while waiting for a perfect moment that never comes.
-Originally posted on Medium 11/22/23