Learning Lewis: BBC Broadcast Reflections

I've never really given the personality or personal life of CS Lewis much thought beyond "Wow, he must have been extremely intelligent." But what I heard about Jack yesterday in class made a lot of sense to me. He was kind, stern, competitive in his ideas. He avoided large crowds of people and kept to himself and his group of well-known friends instead. He was introverted and spent most of his time in his head rather than in the material world - he owned no TV and got his news from word of mouth. I can relate to all of these behaviors. I avoid TV whenever possible and would rather spend my time with a select few than a large group of people. (That is to say I am an introvert that favors the realm of ideas and solitude, not that I am at all a genius or amazing author, although those who are, like Lewis, certainly have my respect.)

The broadcast basically stated that Jack spent the whole of his time thinking, speaking to groups of people, and writing, which is consistant with the amount of works that he has published and his participation in public life. His lack of interest in international, and even national, happenings may have been excusable, and even likable, before the advent of the Internet and an almost entirely global economy, but I doubt it would have been acceptable in today's society. Some people feel as though they are born in the wrong part of time, but for Lewis, I think he was quite timely.

I also found it fascinating that he married a girl just so she could stay in England. To me that sounds inconsistant with his personality. I'm not really surprised that they wound up falling in love - the majority of human history has composed of marriages that started with strangers and ended with lovers. That is to say that arranged marriages where neither person knew the other beforehand were common, and they fell in love later in their marriage, once they got to know each other. This to me proves that love is a choice. Not our common concept of falling in love per say, but what we would call "making it work." It really is a tragedy, though, that after waiting most of his for Joy, that their time together was so short.