“‘What you have made me see,’ answered the Lady, ‘is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet it has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one’s mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before — that the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished — if it were possible to wish — you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.”
From Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
I love this quote. It really sums up the entire book of Perelandra, but moreover, it captures an important spiritual principle. Part of that principle is the idea of embracing change as a gift. It goes along with the idea of non-resistance. Change happens, you don’t get where you were headed, but if you don’t resist, you realize you DID get somewhere. The goal you originally had was good to give you direction and momentum. It moved you. You moved forward. But even if the place you arrived isn’t the one you sought, it is a different place and it has its own gifts and beauty. If you spend your time lamenting the change, you miss the here and the now.
Right here, right now.
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