it's not about hope.

A few years ago, I was deep in the quagmire of existential despair. Not about any one thing in particular; rather, I was despairing about many things, the ample list of things that seem to only be getting worse. At that time, I was particularly angry about the notion of hope, and I was stuck on the idea that hope was a useless concept: there was, in fact, nothing sufficiently hopeful to convince me.

In the depths of my quagmire, John and I were driving up to visit my aunt in New Hampshire. We were listening to the BBC dramatization of Lord of the Rings, not because I'm a fan, but because John is, and I had agreed that I would listen to this production at least once.

At some point in the story, a group led by Aragorn is about to ride through a truly awful forest full of spirits of dead people. It seems unlikely that they'll survive, and even more unlikely that their mission will be successful. Probably, Sauron will prevail and Middle Earth will descend into the horrors of industrialization. Someone says to Aragorn, "There is no hope." To which Aragorn replies, "Then we will go on without hope."

We will go on without hope.

This sentence stopped me in my tracks. We will go on without hope. We do not need hope in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other. We don't need hope to continue doing our sacred work to the best of our ability, to do our small part to make things better. Hope is, in fact, irrelevant.

I had been raging so hard against hope, feeling like it would be foolish to have it, frustrated at people who proclaimed it. Once I heard this sentence, that tension immediately dissolved: I don't need to figure out a way to convince myself to have hope. I just have to keep going anyway. I can keep going whether or not I believe things are going to get better. I can create a hope-free life for myself.

At this point, I'd love to say something dramatic like: Once I stopped trying to hope, I stopped feeling despair.

I wish that were true. It isn't. I still regularly feel despair, and I still regularly need to zoom in and zoom out and try to wrap my head around my own existence and life on this earth.

But I will tell you this: if you're someone who feels existential despair and you haven't yet convinced yourself to feel hopeful, you don't need to. The solution to existential despair doesn't have to be hope. There are ways of finding meaning, joy, and peace in life without relying on hope to make you feel better.

If you want to explore hope-free strategies for feeling good about existence, I encourage you to join me for Herbs for Existential Despair tomorrow. It will be the most honest class I've ever taught, and perhaps even the most useful one.

yours in hope-free joy,

Amanda