Day to day life is filled with despair. Certain major events bring it about in life too, like graduation, unemployment, or the general feeling of hopelessness of being in this world. Emotional highs or lows can equally bring it about. When one opens oneself up to the idea of despair, one can begin to think rationally about it.
Despair in the sense that is discussed here follows much in the line of Kierkegaard’s sense from the ‘Sickness Unto Death:’ “Despair is a sickness of the spirit, of the self, and accordingly can take three forms: in despair not to be conscious of having a self (Not despair in the strict sense); in despair not to will to be oneself; in despair to will to be oneself.” I realize that is quite a mouthful, but it’s straight from Kierkegaard.
To unpack these kinds of despair, one can look to how we deal with these forms in life. The first sense is an ignorance of the condition entirely. For instance, the happy pig in the mud scenario. Thesecond sense is to want to be someone else like Babe Ruth, Malcolm X, or Betty Boop.
The third sense is trickier. In a way it means, as Kierkegaard scholar Gordon Marino describes it, to “become who you fundamentally are.” But this is misleading. Does it mean finding fulfillment in a job to the effect that, “I am a carpenter, baker, etc.” or does it mean recognizing that one is “a self or spirit”? This last sense is the active form of despair, where we have accepted who we are, but have not accepted that we’re going to carry on in the same old ways. We seek to do something about it. There is an irony when we perceive our existence in this way, at least by Kierkegaard’s logic. We perceive that the way we live cannot possibly offer us happiness.
Without these perspectives on despair, we can’t really get a handle on the existential paradox it implies. Who really knows what they “are”? At best we know what we do and become in our life.
Let’s look at how despair arises. At some point in one’s life, the knowledge we have comes from the realization that the universe is absurd, pointless and random. We just happen to be a small part of that whole. It gives rise to a profound disillusionment. It is the dark night of the soul.
In the modern society of medicines and quick fixes, despair easily gets confused with depression, and no one seems to pause long enough to think through that this is a spiritual pain where we advanced primates struggle with our consciousness of the world. It is our way of dealing with the great “why?” and “what for?” of our lives.
We are fortunate enough to have the fully bellies and the economic privilege that allows us to think about Kierkegaard and the meaning in life, where countless others on this earth are just struggling to survive.
Part of his answer comes in the realization that each of us is a “slice of eternity,” which is somehow supposed to overcome the despair with awe and wonder. According to Kierkegaard, after realizing the absurdity we are meant to make a leap of faith into Christianity. Oftentimes the introspective life disallows this quick fix. More than likely, no spiritual answer exists. More likely, meaning lives and dies in our brief flash of time here.
But what if we have to live the same slice over again? Based on what we know of science, and the principle of identity (A=A), our slice of eternity might possibly recur with each of us living the self-same life down to every last dissatisfaction and emotional pain. We come back to despair once again. What will we each become?
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