There is despair in the world after all!
And it is wonderful. And we need it.
Our entire culture today keeps pumping out the message that we must never despair, because if we only want something badly enough, we can achieve anything. Every Disney and Hollywood film is built on the idea that if we want something really, really badly — we will manage to get it. And we have been quoted Nietzsche and Viktor Frankl so many times — “he who has a why to live can bear almost any how!” — that we have forgotten there were plenty of other people in the Holocaust who had plenty of reasons and a fierce will to live, just like Viktor Frankl — and it did not help them. Why? Because not everything depends on them or on their will, however strong it may be.
And the mindset of “never despair, because with a strong enough will you can achieve anything” is both harmful and false, and above all — devoid of compassion. Because then, if I see a poor man in the street — why should I give him anything? He clearly doesn’t want it badly enough! If he truly wanted to, he would already have gotten himself out of that situation. I swear I have heard people talk exactly like that. This is the root of the alienation that capitalism brings with it.
So let us despair every once in a while. It may be the best thing that ever happens to us. In the very place where despair begins, hope grows.
Here is a personal despair story of mine, to make things clear:
For several years I thought I was headed into music. I love composing, writing and playing. Releasing my album accompanied me for about ten years. Always alongside something else. And I recorded another song, and another one, and another version. It was nice, but at some point it began to weigh on me like a backpack that gains another stone with every passing year. It sat on me all the time, even when I was busy with other things. Nu, when is it finally coming out?
And about a year ago, on one especially wonderful morning, I decided to despair completely. Not a little, not halfway. All the way: I will never be a singer, I will never sell albums, I will never perform. Ever. That’s it.
And at that very moment a 90-kilo backpack dropped off my back. And my back was overjoyed. How would this story have ended in Hollywood? “And then, after I gave up, I was suddenly discovered and my songs spread all over the world…”
But no. There is no happy end. And that is exactly the point. I despaired with the kind of despair that doesn’t peek back to see whether maybe now, after giving up, something will finally happen. Not the kind of despair that writes a despair post just to hear “oh come on, keep going.” Real despair. That’s it — this is not my thing in this world. That is the despair that truly clears space.
And it cleared space in me for other dreams, some of which I will probably succeed at, and some of which I hope I will know how to give up on at some point. Because there is nothing more heartbreaking than people who never despair, even when all the red lights have already come on.
There are things in myself I have despaired of changing, there are friendships I have despaired of maintaining, there are tasks I have despaired of succeeding at. And every such despair cleared space in my soul for the things I truly must never despair of.
Sometimes there is no light at the end of the tunnel — because it has no exit. And then you must turn around — and find the light precisely in the direction you came in from.
