Hopelessness

I know what it feels like to be depressed – even to the point of suicidal despair. I know what it feels like for one’s life to seem hopeless. But I also know from experience that this darkness can give way to an unfolding realization of hope.

Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor and founder of Logotherapy, used to say, that even in the worst circumstances one may find meaning, purpose, and value for one’s life by the attitude one takes up toward one’s suffering. It is a core principle of perhaps every great spiritual tradition. It underlies what has been called the “Disciplines for a good or spiritual life” – universal, time-tested, ways or means that enable us to realize a good life.

You may believe that what you’ve inherited by nature or nurture literally determines who or what you are and can become. You may believe it literally determines any hope you may have for a good life. You may hate your job and believe that if you won the lottery your life would dramatically change for the better. But is that what defines who you are? Are you really wholly determined by what’s outside of you, or can you be more and better than you are? Perhaps we all need to raise rather than lower the bar of what we can become. Perhaps hope really is possible in even the worst circumstances.

This too is something we can explore together.