A profound hopelessness. A feeling of helplessness. The experience of powerlessness. A pessimistic outlook for the future. These are various aspects of despair.
Despair is a common human experience. When things are going poorly, really poorly, when it seems like the bottom is falling out of life and we don’t see a way out, then despair is the feeling which can invade our lives.
Despair isn’t something new. However, most people don’t talk about despair today. Instead, the common use of clinical language paints over despair and calls it depression. But despair is different from depression. Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre understood despair as a refusal to be our full self, to allow ourselves to be stuck in something which we aren’t. Soren Kierkegaard, the theologian, described despair in his 1849 book titled Sickness Unto Death. Kierkegaard understood that despair totally immobilizes a person and prevents someone from moving forward. Kierkegaard understood the solution for despair as faith. This faith which Kierkegaard wrote about wasn’t about a set of beliefs but faith in something beyond ourselves: the possibility of something good in the future, the hope that things would get better, the belief that what I do can make a difference to someone.
Despair is really a spiritual crisis. At its heart, the experience of despair is the acceptance of being hopeless, helpless, powerless, with no chance for anything better in the future. Despair, while a feeling, conveys a sense of living a worthless life which just doesn’t matter.
It seems to me that many people today are experiencing various levels of despair. For some, the political or economic circumstances in their countries lead them to feel powerless. Others face serious illness or the loss of relationships and feel hopeless. Still, others have become frustrated by trying to make a better life with nothing seeming to work leading to hopelessness.
Attempting to deny the experience of despair doesn’t resolve it anyway. Putting on a happy face….well, that’s probably like putting lipstick on a pig — it’s still a pig. In fact, acting as though one isn’t in despair may make the experience worse, and that could lead to clinical depression. Rather, as with many things, the way out despair is by going through the experience.
By acknowledging the experience of despair, one can begin to ask what can be done to restore faith in a brighter tomorrow, the possibility of goodness in life, or something meaningful. Then, a person can take small steps which can help make a change. Some of those steps may be in the form of self-care, like getting more rest, pulling back from difficult situations, or exercising more regularly. Other steps come from being aware of what I, as an individual, can do in my daily life that brings goodness to others. Offering kindness to a stranger, even if it’s just a smile, can bring hope to another person. Engaging in anything that is beneficial to others can begin to bring us out of despair, whether that’s assisting someone in the grocery store, complimenting another person, or any small act of kindness. Such acts are important because they take the focus away from one’s own experience of despair and shifts that focus on something that helps another.
In time, as we move the focus from our own experience of dark despair, we are able to engage with others in more positive and creative ways. That is when our hope for the future is restored.
Kierkegaard was right: despair is a spiritual problem. Its resolution is a rediscovery of faith: faith that there is goodness in the world and that I can share in experiencing that goodness, even though there are also difficult things about life as well.
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