dryads and naiads dancing around

In the theme of Narnia and Prince Caspian (sort of), I thought I'd bring up C.S. Lewis. A while ago I read one of his books entitled The Screwtape Letters. It's a satire, a Christian satire, in the form of thirty-one letters from a world-wise old devil named Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood.

fig. 1. The Screwtape Letters. fig. 2. Prince Caspian. Completely relevant.

In any case, I found the book difficult to get through because it wasn't in story-form. It's nothing like Narnia--no tea parties with goat-footed fauns that look like James McAvoy (I'm tempted to put another picture up--no, I'll resist), no dryads and naiads dancing around. They're just letters, that portray human life with irony and sly wit.

But it was completely worth reading, if only for bits like this:

All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is elementary.

This struck me, because:
a) it reminded me strikingly of Sherlock Holmes. ("Elementary, my dear Watson!" Although, did you know, that phrase is actually not found anywhere in Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective series?)

fig. 3. Sherlock Holmes. Again, this is completely relevant.

and:

b) it made me feel somewhat worried.

Worried? Why?

It got me thinking about the sorts of facades we put up. Consciously or unconsciously, we all act a different way around different people. I even talk differently to different friends. (Yeah, I hate that.) I could be all dramatic and tear my hair and cry out which one is the real me?!

...but I think I'll save that for a later date (:

What does worry me, though, is if I feel comfortable treating my friends rudely and disrespectfully--even though it might be in a light-hearted sense--what if I find myself being mean and cynical more often than I am genuine and nice? I have this distorted perception of myself that I can behave however/say whatever I want and the only thing that really matters is the strength of my inner character. But if your outer self is what people see, what influences your friends and what draws people toward you or pushes them away from you--I suppose that's also important (light and salt, hey). And, according to C.S. Lewis, that's going to change who you are within, as well.

The quote also emphasises the power of our actions. Pretend to be world-wise, and in the end you will be a worldly person.

Ooh, I'm at risk of sounding preachy. I shall end here, I think. Lunch smells good. And perhaps finish off with a passage from the book. I like this.

You will notice that we have got them completely fogged about the meaning of the word 'real'. They tell each other, of some great spiritual experience, 'All that really happened was that you heard some music in a lighted building'; here 'real' means the bare physical facts, separated from the other elements in the experience they actually had. On the other hand, they will also say 'It's all very well discussing that high dive as you sit here in an armchair, but wait till you get up there and see what it's really like': here 'real' is being used in the opposite sense to mean, not the physical facts (which they already know while discussing the matter in armchairs) but the emotional effect those facts will have on a human consciousness. Either application of the word could be defended; but our business is to keep the two going at once so that the emotional value of the word 'real' can be placed now on one side of the account, now on the other, as it happens to suit us.