We live in a world of wounds and partial wins
I enjoyed a recent blog on Hallowe’en from the Bible society, which quoted C S Lewis as follows:
In a famous essay, C S Lewis spoke about how ‘fairy stories’ could educate children: we mustn’t keep out of a boy’s mind, he said, ‘the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, and adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil’. He goes on, ‘I think it is possible that by confining your child to blameless stories of child life in which nothing at all alarming ever happens, you would fail to banish the terrors and would succeed in banishing all that can ennoble them or make them endurable. For in the fairy tales, side by side with the terrible figures, we find the immemorial comforters and protectors, the radiant ones …’ In other words, he says, it’s not that we shouldn’t think about terrible enemies at all: we should know they can be beaten. 1
I’ve just finished reading “Wake up” by Pierce Morgan (only as a means to stay out of the echo chamber you understand). He also raises the matter (or should I say “he has a bit of a rant”) about the consequences of overprotecting our children. Unsurprisingly Glenn and Mr Lewis comment in more gracious tones and make a really valuable point.