The question was posed in 1948 by millions of panicked Americans, who firmly believed they were about to be blown to bits by an atom bomb. Imagine if C.S. Lewis was alive today, and been asked instead, “How are we to live with a novel coronavirus?” As you read his 300-word answer, simply replace the words "atomic bomb," with "coronavirus." I hope it brings as much perspective and peace to your life as it does to mine.
“On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948)
“How are you to live in an atomic age? Why, just as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anaesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things - praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts - not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies, but they need not dominate our minds."
C.S. Lewis
