"gloriously different"

I came across a C. S. Lewis quote a few days back:

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

I've only read a limited amount of Lewis, so I didn't know from which of his works it had been pulled. But I was curious to read the quote in context. The concept of originality - what makes one an "artist," unique and worthwhile - has been running about in my mind a lot lately. There seems to be such a prevalence of snobbery in the art world, whether it be music or film or photography or whathaveyou. I often find myself overpowered by it, such that I feel as though I couldn't possibly have something new to offer or that whatever I've created is in some way cliched or inferior. A feeling which doesn't exactly inspire one to create. So it's been a struggle, to say the least.

But yeah, so I looked it up tonight and found the larger passage, which (of course) opened up a whole new can of worms for me. Here it is, from Mere Christianity:


At the beginning I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most "natural" men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.

But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away "blindly" so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.

Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorites wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.


I can't imagine a more amazing and challenging goal than to give up the concern for my idea of my own self. It seems to be such an inherent concern. But, regardless, I'm inspired. That, short story long, is my point, I suppose.