Mostly it's that I started reading Surprised by Joy, by C.S. Lewis, and it came up a bit. He mentions early that the hills of Ireland, where he grew up, gave him the first hint of desire - that they were beautiful out the windows of his father's house, but distant and unattainable. Then he mentioned the 'Blue Flower' - I wasn't familiar with the motif, so looked it up and realized it was an important symbol of Romanticism, at least for the Germans.
It actually is like the others - particularly in the sense of longing and desire for something that's not obvious. Really, in a sense, the whole book seems to be about romanticism - but of a spiritual cast. Basically he's talking about his conception of Joy, as a brief and shining moment of intense desire for something unattainable - not unattainable because one's just not able to attain it, but that the 'thing' is logically not attainable, that the idea of 'attaining' cannot be associated with the object, and yet there is still that longing. Obviously he's ultimately going to connect
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I read the very first part of that book a long time ago, when I was on a Lewis kick, and have meant to come back and read it for real. I like that he identifies joy with desire - one thing I think is flawed about Buddhism/Schopenhauer/other philosophies of that cast is that they ignore the fact that some of the most enjoyable things we do involve anticipation of future goods, or hoping, or fantasizing, or even bittersweetly dreaming of something we can't have. They go from the observations that suffering is central to human experience, and that desire can often be a cause of suffering, to the conclusion that all desire and all life is suffering. I think Lewis has the right of it - our lives are beautiful and joyous because we have this capacity for intense desire. Some of the moments that come to mind when I think of joy are at Talisman concerts when the music was so beautiful I stopped breathing, and the feeling I associate with that is of an uncontainable desire for something inexplicable - for time not to move, or for the music
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You should post whatever thoughts you are having, even if it comes off inelegantly. Writing doesn't just perfectly come... sometimes ya gotta practice. Plus, it makes for more conversation :)
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It actually is like the others - particularly in the sense of longing and desire for something that's not obvious. Really, in a sense, the whole book seems to be about romanticism - but of a spiritual cast. Basically he's talking about his conception of Joy, as a brief and shining moment of intense desire for something unattainable - not unattainable because one's just not able to attain it, but that the 'thing' is logically not attainable, that the idea of 'attaining' cannot be associated with the object, and yet there is still that longing. Obviously he's ultimately going to connect ( ... )
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