day no. 16,108: sometimes it seems

"My mistake was what Pascal, if I remember rightly, calls 'Error of Stoicism': thinking we can do always what we can do sometimes." -- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

We sometimes forget that we cannot always do what we have only done sometimes. We tend to misremember ourselves and believe that we could do at any time anything we have been able to once before. Sometimes it seems our sometimes could be always.

Pelagianism is our default.

We trust our ability to do whatever we want to do, whenever we feel like doing it. But our wills are not at our disposal and we can't often make ourselves feel like doing anything. Our feels, rather, often try to make us do something. They do not simply do what we ask or want . They do not even do what we sometimes wish they did.

Having done something once upon a time is no guarantee you can do it again at this moment or will be able to do it sometime in the future.