In C. S. Lewis's Suprised by Joy, he recalls an interesting epiphany that encouraged his conversion. After having "aesthetic experiences," which were caused by ideas (and music, primarily Wagner) he encountered in his teenage years, Lewis set about to reproduce these moments of Joy, as he called them. These experiences became a kind of measure or standard of his subsequent experiences. However, Lewis realized that any experience of love, anger, ecstasy, or sadness cannot be enjoyed or contemplated simultaneously. We experience love only when we have an object at which to direct and attach our love. The minute we contemplate (he uses the word contemplate) what is actually happening, we momentarily cease enjoying that which we were encountering. This fact, this human limitation, became an inescapable truth for Lewis, and it changed his pursuit of Joy because he had for years sought to find enjoyment by means of contemplation, which usually ended in disappointment.
We ought to reflect on the effects this anthropological schism has on our human existence. One reflection Lewis lends in his book is the effects this divide has on vices. If you contemplate drunkenness, fornication, or lying, they often appear as they really are: shameful, disgusting, and evil. However, the minute one moves from contemplation to enjoyment, the true realities of these vices fade away and only the object is before us and we often indulge. This is one inescapable danger of this schism: letting enjoyment override contemplation, that is, making the dialogue between these a monologue. A second inescapable danger moves in the opposite direction but is formally the same. By letting contemplation overpower enjoyment, we can only create false impressions, which at best are silly replicas, but at worst are idols. Turning actual love of someone into a mental fiction. Or, trying to reproduce a past moment of enjoyment by contemplating it, which leads to disappointment and possibly even the conclusion that no such experiences are possible any more. How many marriages deteriorate and disintegrate because of this second error? Is there a solution? This divide is too fresh to me to offer anything that would be remotely helpful. Lewis, at least, viewed his realization of this as ultimately freeing, since he had gone about things the wrong way, and so my initial take away is that of an important warning.
