We read to know we are not alone.

[From 5:00 onwards]

C. S. Lewis:
We read to know we are not alone. Do you think that's so?

Student Chadwick:
Well, I hadn't thought at it before like that, Sir.

C. S. Lewis:
No, nor would I. I suppose people would say, "We love to know we are not alone. Would you?

Student Chadwick:
Well, if you mean falling in love, well, I haven't really, I mean, I probably learn more about love from books than from personal experience.

C. S. Lewis:
[A pause of silence and turns to the window] Go on, I'm listening.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers any more; only the life I have lived. Twice in that life, I've been given the choice, as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety; the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.


I think along the path of life, there are few things that one must feel thankful of. A "life author" is one of them. By that I mean not just a good writer with few books you enjoy, but a great mind that you can connect with, for life. S/he's your mentor, your friend and could be almost like a soul-mate. I'm fortunate enough to find in the writings of C.S. Lewis. There aren't many authors who possess as diverse a body of work as him: from literature criticism, theological writings, Christian apologies, poetry, autobiography, collective letters and essays, novels, science fictions (Space Trilogy) to the classic children books, The Chronicles of Narnia.

I don't consider myself an avid reader. I read very little. I cannot compare him with other great thinkers and writers through out the history of mankind. But often greatness is not to be known by comparison. It stood there. You just know when you see it.

I re-watched recently the movie Shadowlands. It's based on the true story of him and his wife Joy Davidman and how they come to terms with Joy's cancer illness and her subsequent death. The above conversation gives the movie an understated but conclusive end. For an Oxford professor who suffered the pain of losing his mother at an early age and opted for a life safe from the turbulence and possible agony of being in love, it's an unexpected life event to meet an American writer at his middle age and go on to marry her.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

What C. S. Lewis wrote in books and believed in mind, now became a reality that he struggled to live through. "Experience is a brutal teacher, you learned, my God you learned." A cry in the movie after Joy's death. He did experience a period of questioning his faith and theodicy, later recorded in his book A Grief Observed, which helped inspire this movie.

It's worth a watch just for the brilliant performance of Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger (Academy Award nomination for Best Actress). It's a quiet, sometimes slow-paced film. Nothing overdramatic but possibly tear-jerking and even life-changing.