# “Here at last is the thing I was made for” by C.S. Lewis

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2018/11/26/here-at-last-is-the-thing-i-was-made-for-by-c-s-lewis/
- Published: 2018-11-26T14:00:56-06:00
- Author: tollelege

“There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find
myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything 
else.

You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret
thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, 
though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all,
and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that.

Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have
been looking for all of your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who
appears to be seeing what you saw– but at the first words a gulf yawns between you,
and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that
he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by
which you are transported.

Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the
others are curiously ignorant of– something, not to be identified with, but always
on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-
clap of water against the boat’s side?

Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another
human being who has some inkling of that which you were born desiring, and which,
beneath the flux of other desires and in all momentary silences between the louder
passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking
for, watching for, listening for?

You have never _had_ it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul
have been but hints of it – tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled,
echoes that died away just as they caught your ear.

But if it should ever really become manifest – if there ever came an echo that did
not die away but swelled into the sound itself- you would know it. Beyond all possibility
of doubt you would say, ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.’

We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the
incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives
or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds,
when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work.

While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”

–C.S. Lewis, [_The Problem of Pain_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060652969?tag=toletaupanre-20)(
New York: HarperCollins, 1940/1996), 149-151.

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