Affection

Lately, I'm more comfortable quoting other people than dishing out a dose of myself on the blog. In a moment of transparency, I write a bunch of stuff, publish it, and then chicken out thinking, "I didn't have enough time to edit. I'll be misunderstood. This post was too serious, too heavy. I'll just tell someone this in real life or shove this one back in my brain where it belongs. No blogging necessary." And then I go save the post as a draft, therefore removing it from the home page. One friend called me out on my latest withdrawn post, wondering where it went, and wanting me to email it to her. And so I did. Because I feel better emailing to a specific person who knows me so well and who I know would say, "What did you mean by this right here?" or "That's a little intense, Lee. Simmer down!" I will always and forever treasure these kinds of friends by the way. Love to Laurin!

So this is all one big preface to what I'm about to say. The other day, for whatever reason, I recalled the chapter on Affection in C.S. Lewis's book The Four Loves. I go back to different parts of this book a lot, in fact. But this time I went back to the chapter on Affection. I was trying to recall the story about Mrs. Fidget. She's the woman who works tirelessly for her family, even in ways that don't help them at all, but in fact annoy them or manipulate them. But she keeps doing these things. She does them, ultimately, for herself, even though she would never admit such. She's always "living for her family." She's the example of the Gift-Love side of affection. This is affection gone awry, but in a different way than the Need-Love.

Lewis says of Mrs. Fidget:

"For Mrs. Fidget, as she so often said, would 'work her fingers to the bone' for her family. They couldn't stop her. Nor could they--being decent people--quite sit still and watch her do it. They had to help. Indeed they were always having to help. That is, they did things for her to help her to do things for them which they didn't want done. . . She continued all these practices because if she had dropped them she would have been faced with the fact she was determined not to see; would have known that she was not necessary."

He later goes on to refer to Jane Austen's novel Emma. He says, "Emma intends that Harriet Smith should have a happy life; but only the sort of happy life which Emma herself has planned for her."

That touched on my parenting sensibilities, of course. When you really love someone, you desire their happiness, even if it departs from you in some way. Your desire is concerned for the other, not just for the other as they relate to you. I know my kids will go their own way on some matter. Maybe several. Am I going to quench the fire because I feel "left out"? I hope not.

Then Lewis says of his own profession, "If we are any good [as teachers], we must always be working toward the moment at which our pupils are fit to become our critics and rivals. We should be delighted when it arrives, as the fencing master is delighted when his pupil can pink and disarm him. And many are."

The other example of affection gone bad is the Need-love.

"We all know that we must do something, if not to merit, at least to attract, erotic love or friendship. But Affection is often assumed to be provided, ready-made, by nature; "built-in," "laid-on," "on the house." We have a right to expect it. If the others do not give it, they are "unnatural."

It's true he says, that, "Affection will arise and grow strong without demanding any shining qualities in its objects. . ."

But then he says, "What we have is not "a right to expect" but a "reasonable expectation" of being loved by our intimates if we, and they, are more or less ordinary people. But we may not be. We may be intolerable. If we are, "nature' will work against us. . . Affection is an affair of old clothes, and ease, of the unguarded moment, of liberties which would be ill-bred if we took them with strangers. But old clothes are one thing; to wear the same shirt till it stank would be another. . .Affection at its best neither wishes to wound nor to humiliate nor to domineer."

I had a lot of thoughts as I read through the pages of the chapter on Affection. Unfortunately, I spent so much blogging time quoting the book, that I am now too tired to recount the thoughts of my own. I'd probably end up unpublishing them anyway =)