Carrying despair

"Don't despair!" is not the rallying cry I once thought it was. Now I cringe at my (not so much) younger self, embarrassed. Ashamed, even, for I realise now that my words and sentiment were born from my then inability to face the despair burgeoning in my own heart.

We deny and erase in others what we deny and erase in ourselves.

In the face of overwhelming horrors, like we are facing today, both directly and indirectly, to feel despair is to acknowledge reality. The reality of horror.

When I finally admitted to my own despair, I struggled not to be crushed under its weight. Quite literally, I was thinking, "How the @#$% do you walk around with this thing?!" Like many others, I felt like simply lying down and never moving again.

It was quite terrifying how the words, "What's the point?" kept echoing around in my head as I struggled under this dark, dark weight. Then I felt another voice faintly in the background. It was the memory of a quote, and all I could remember of it was, "They want you to feel [this way]..."

I dug around for a bit and discovered those were (close to) the opening words to a quote by Rebecca Solnit that I saw a little while ago on Mastodon somewhere:

They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love.

"The pain you feel is because of what you love." My face scrunched when I read that. Sweet, tender pain.

In that moment, I found my answer to the question of, "How the @#$% do you walk with this thing?"

You carry it. Just like Frodo, carrying the One Ring.

Moving forwards in the face of horror is not about not feeling despair. Like much of the darkness we fear to face in ourselves, it's not about fighting despair, avoiding despair, or collapsing under despair.

You can move with it, despite it. One step at a time, like Frodo did. And yes, with all the agony that may entail. The character of Frodo shows us that grace is not easy, even if it is simple, and it's not always pretty, either.

Yet, despair is not the enemy. It is a terrible, terrible feeling for sure, but it is a right, normal and healthy response to terrible things and terrible times. For, Rebecca Solnit says, it lets you know what matters to you and is a measure of what the loss of that means to you.

Despair is a howling, "NO," that can become the seed of either refusal or denial. Resistance or compliance. And in that way, despair is latent power, to be tapped into, or tamped down.

I mean, heck, just feel the damn thing. It is powerful, powerful enough to lay you low. Yet it is not separate from you; it exists of you. What that means is that despair is not a power over you. It simply is, and it is what you choose to make of its presence in yourself that will decide if you rise with it, or collapse under it.

In sum, despair is not only powerful, it is beautiful. A terrible, beautiful light, illuminating, clarifying, "This is what you love."

And asking the question, "What will you do (about it)?"