January 14
Speak your everlasting Yes: work and do not despair. At the very heart of distress everything turns — and becomes strength.
Sartor Resartus (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Speak your everlasting Yes: work and do not despair. At the very heart of distress everything turns — and becomes strength.
Despair is, to begin with, a judgement about the future: nothing will come of anything now. Such a judgement is hard to argue against, because it appeals to something no one has yet seen. Every counterexample comes from the past and so doesn't count.
Work does not ask you to withdraw that judgement. You can sort papers, answer a letter, paint a wall, without first being convinced that anything will turn because of it. The task asks only for the next small step. There is a curious relief in that: you don't have to hope first in order to keep going.
Yet the same activity can also be a hiding place. As long as you are always busy, you don't have to look at what has actually been lost. From the outside the two ways of working are hard to tell apart, and often from the inside as well.
Perhaps the difference shows only later. One day you notice that you can talk about what was lost without your voice giving way. When that began, you don't know. There was no moment in which you decided on it. Only many in which you didn't stop.
