Chapter Text
O’ Despair. It’s a universal constant that will inevitably taint even the most pristine of utopias. Not a single living creature can evade it. Despair contorts itself past all defenses. No matter the precautions, despair will always find a means of infiltration. Sometimes these very mechanisms of defense prove to be the opportunity for despair to take hold. Say someone isolates themselves so as to never feel the despair of losing a friend or the death of a loved one. But in the very end, it is that solitude and loneliness that leads them to despair!
Some zealots would like to believe that faith is the path to salvation. That this “hope” will protect them from despair. But hope is an unreliable source! A nonrenewable resource that turns into endless despair when it has been exhausted. Ultimately, hope is nothing more than denial of reality. The belief that ultimately the future will be better. But there is no way of knowing this for sure. And people who are unequipped to handle that truth only get hit harder. The brightest lights cast the darkest shadows. We are all constantly in the process of dying. Job teaches us this tale of endurance, but it was not hope in the future that resolved his problems. Hope is inaction. No, it was only once the variable causing Job’s suffering was removed did his life return to normal. Had his trial been one day longer, he surely would have fallen into despair. And in the end, Job was still only mortal and on his track toward death.
Hope is mere delusion. It is only despair that comes with absolute certainty. It is the inevitability of hope. If you have hope you will experience despair. If you do not have hope you are experiencing despair. Just like if you eat a big meal, you’ll inevitably have to use the bathroom, the mere act of having hope sets you up for despair. Not everyone will have the will to act on their hopes, but everyone will know the warm shroud of despair in their lifetime. It is unavoidable. Even if you seclude yourself from the experience of life. That seclusion only becomes your despair. Despair is best done ironically, you know.
But the difference between the two comes down to the irrefutable facts. Hope is a mindset. Despair is a condition. Hope can linger for only seconds in one’s mind before being dashed, but for some people despair can linger with them for their entire lives. When you despair, you are not shocked by the disappointments of life. When you despair you do not question the future. When you despair, you have certainty. And if something betrays your expectations, it only becomes more despair. "For even if all of the despair in the world was erased, then that would be reason enough to feel despair."
These are simply the true facets of hope and despair. Humans do their all to defy despair which they know is an inevitability. Death itself and its uncertainty is despair. After all, it is our much revered William Shakespeare, author of many tragedies in which his characters are all submerged in despair, who wrote, “Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.” But humans incessantly try to stop the unstoppable ends. Despair is the end of hope. And hope is only the intermission between despair.
But what about me? I don’t struggle with the duality of hope and despair; I’m a being made only from despair who cares only for despair and experiences only despair. Why’s that? ‘Cause I’m a bear!
This has been the Gospel of Despair.