I Don't Have The Time

This past weekend, I sat in a car for seven hours. My gram needed help cleaning and decorating her apartment and I went to give assistance. The car ride from our home to her is brutal. There is no scenery besides the crops and the forgotten vehicles in yards. The drive is relatively straight, so even the road doesn't demand your attention. So straight, in fact, that Tim and I have joked that if you could find a way to lock the steering wheel that you could take a nap for two and a half hours.


This drive was torture to me. I didn't mind if I had someone with me or if I can set up a time to call a friend to catch up on the way. However, if no one was available, I  would be completely bored in the car. When I would be able to get the occasional station to tune in on my radio, the music didn't satisfy me. Finally, I discovered  audio books. Audio books have become my go to entertainment for trips, and helped to decrease annoyance to all of my friends who I would always try to call. For this weekend, it was Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis. 

Although I love almost all of Lewis's work, I must say that this is one of my favorites of his writings. For the unfortunate ones who haven't had the chance to read this, I REALLY recommend it. To understand the rest of post, you need to know a little background on this book. Lewis writes the book from the perspective of two demons. There is an older, experienced demon that is teaching the ways of trapping and tempting the human he is assigned to. 


"Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend's talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption "My time is my own". Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright."


After reading that, anything I say would only take away. For all of you non Lewis loving fans, I hope I have turned you from your ways!