Selfish Enjoyments

All this flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;

I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,

I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;

I talk of love - a scholar's parrot may talk Greek -

But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

The above poem was written by C. S. Lewis.

Recently I've been entertaining thoughts on the Selflessness of Love. Our Loves are, altogether, Selfish. We usually don't realize it, but if we look deep enough and hard enough we can't but come to the conclusion that we are Selfish Lovers. We aren't supposed to be, yet, unfortunately enough, we are. Everything we do - in the name of "Love" - seems to carry in its core the seeds of Selfishness. It's not supposed to, at least I don't think it is. Christ's Love was Selfless. If ever a Love could merit the description of Selflessness it would be His. But upon the examination of our own Loves I can't seem to see much of His Love in our own Loves. We always end up expecting something in return. Someone once told me that the gifts given in the name of Love should not expect anything in return - not even the courtesy of a "thank you" or the pleasure of a smile. Is that so? Is that really the way it should be?

C. S. Lewis also wrote (in The Problem of Pain): "There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man’s love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object."

Can we not free ourselves of those chains with which we've chosen to bind ourselves? It is, after all, not God who binds us. Nor you (presumably, from the poem, a woman, probably his wife, Hellen Joy Gresham, but this is mere assumption). Nor friends. No one imprisoned Lewis but himself, and no one imprisons me but my self. My self imprisons itself in selfishness. But it can be free! It can be free by not searching out too far or too deep or too long into the intentions behind every action. The action is good, whether the intention be so or not. By no means, do I suggest that the intentions be overlooked, but rather that the action be not also ignored by the scrutiny of the intentions. Enjoy Love, that is, after all, according to Lewis, it's definition. Enjoyment. Selfish or otherwise it is to be enjoyed.