Inspired by the author David Grossman whose eloquent and beautiful work takes on many important topics – most recently grief in his book ‘Falling Out of Time‘:
There are often so many reasons to despair. All that we want to bring about that is beyond us, all that seems it cannot change, all that we do not have the power or wherewithal to address.
But, despair itself brings about despair, and hopelessness brings hopelessness, because they draw our attention most strongly to what is despairing and what is hopeless in our worlds.
For Grossman, if you despair ‘you declare that you are a victim of the situation, that you have no control over circumstances, that you are at the mercy of the behaviour of your opponents, that you are totally trapped and motionless.’
And for this reason it is important to hope. Because it is the act of hoping itself that points us towards what is possible, in any situation, for us to do.