Life & Wisdom Quote by C. S. Lewis

Lewis lands the line like a polite paradox: almost everything has an origin, yet we spend much of life pretending origins are either embarrassing, irrelevant, or too complicated to name. The equator joke matters. It’s a lightly worn bit of cosmology that disarms the reader with a schoolbook image, then sneaks in a metaphysical claim. Even the most “natural” lines we draw on the world are human conventions; the equator feels given, but it’s also a measurement, a decision about how to map reality. By exempting it, Lewis signals both humility and mischief: yes, there are limits to our origin stories, but don’t use that as an excuse to deny beginnings where they clearly exist.

The subtext pushes against modern complacency about gradualism and inevitability. Lewis, a Christian apologist who often argued that moral and spiritual realities are not self-generating, is nudging readers toward first causes: ideas have sources, habits have first moments, conversions have a before and after. Beginnings create accountability. If everything begins somewhere, then outcomes aren’t just “how things are”; they’re how things became, which means they could have become otherwise.

The line also works as a quiet rebuke to intellectual fashion. In politics, art, even personal identity, we love to claim we’re beyond labels and origins. Lewis counters: you’re not beyond them; you’re downstream from them. The wit keeps it from sounding preachy, but the consequence remains: if you want to change anything - a life, a culture, a belief - you have to locate its starting point, not just narrate its current state.