InnerBliss: Despair as a Tipping Point

You are a source of Wisdom and Strength
to those around you.
Painting by Marcy Hall.

Listening to: This song makes my heart happy to the point of bursting. And he just keeps getting better.

Today's Bliss Formula: Music. Books. Poetry. All of it. Writing. Walking. A rabbit in the next room. Three cats napping in sun spots. A frog outside reading and writing in her journal. Strawberries waiting for ice cream. Did I say music?

Let me preface this post by stating that I surely know despair. Intimately. But I do not see this blog as a personal diary, so I won't ever get into too many details about myself. I'll save that material for my novels -- besides, it seems more fitting of fiction.

But I have known despair. I have known deep and dark sadness. I have known the loss of the will to live. I have never actively tried to die but I have given up, wanted to sleep and not wake.

Yet these moments have not lasted or I would not be here.

This morning I woke up thinking about the sense of despair I have been getting from writers whom I thought would not go there. Writers whom I thought were beacons of hope. And then when I got online, behold -- many posts today about despair.

(Please stick with me through this; it may make you angry, but please just look into your anger, look past it to the underlying fear.)

I think we need to start at the beginning here with a definition (provided by the trusty Oxford English Dictionary -- shorter version; who can afford the longer?!).

Despair (noun): 1) complete loss or absence of hope; (a feeling of) hopelessness. 2) a cause of hopelessness; a thing about which there is not hope.

No hope.

No hope.

Strong language, that.

Stronger than I think most of us really intend. I think despair somehow has taken on a spiritual luster. Whereas saying "I am pissed" feels unseemly and aggressive, but perhaps is more appropriate for much of what we are feeling. Or "I am scared" or "I am grieving."

But no hope?

Despair is not a place to reside but rather a moment in time, a tipping point, a precipice. It is when you arrive at the cliff and decide to jump off into oblivion or walk away and figure it out.

And figuring it out might hurt and it might suck and it might take a long time, but in the very act of figuring it out, of looking into it, of diving in, you are displaying, working from hope.

You are not hopeless.

You have walked away from the cliff.

I have walked away from many cliffs. This November I will turn 40 and it has taken me a long time to figure out that I don't want to be anywhere near that cliff ever again. It has taken me a long time to figure out that despair is simply not real.

Despair comes about because we are attached to things being a certain way or we are attached to the idea of how things "should" be. We are attached to illusions.

Perhaps our childhood wasn't what we thought it should be. Mine wasn't. But my life now is mine and I believe that my childhood gave me gifts -- not because of the fear and sadness that I experienced but despite the fear and sadness and because of my own resilience and determination.

Perhaps we have lost a loved one "too soon," but would we choose to have never know them at all so as to avoid the pain of that loss? We can't bring them back but we can't lament their loss to the point of despair -- it is equal to lamenting their being.

I think of Gandalf telling Frodo, "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Despair locks us down, paralyzes us. Wouldn't we rather act? Don't we owe ourselves action?

There is no mystical tradition that says despair is okay -- not as a long term response to anything (and I do mean anything). Jesus tells us to love -- no matter what. The Buddha tells us that at our most essential nature we are "ground luminosity."

No despair resides in love; no despair resides in luminosity.

The world may feel like it is ending, but look around at the beauty, look around at this creation. The sky is blue. There are Great Blue Herons on this planet. There is the unconditional, never ending love of an animal companion.

Science tells us that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Hinduism tells us the same -- you cannot die because you were never born.

The freedom of that! The freedom to believe that no matter what "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." (St. Julian)

Let go of the illusions that tell you anything else. Let go of the illusions that hold you back or make you sad. Anything that keeps you from realizing your inner diamond nature is an illusion.

You are a spiritual warrior who never stops fighting.

As you enter this life
I pray you depart
with a wrinkled face
and a brand new heart.

-- U2 (Love and Peace or Else)

If you're needing a bit more inspiration, check out the "prayer wheel" at this place.

Never cease praying (or visualizing or chanting or wishing on stars -- like I say, whatever you feel comfortable with).

But do stop despairing. There's no time to waste.