This past weekend was Easter weekend (followed immediately by April Fool’s Day), and was also the first time that I had been to a church service in a while. I have few obligations to any sort of church these days, for multiple reasons, but it was nice to try something a little bit different and to get out of the house on a nice day. The sermon was also much more engaging than expected, and maybe that’s because we decided to go to a nondenominational, multi-faith service that was led by a Ph.D. in theology with a fantastic rhythm and cadence.

We should take a moment to digest his sermon, which was by far and away the best part of the service. I would go back just to hear him expound a bit more on other aspects of life and purpose. As it was Easter, the main story entailed the myth of Jesus rising from the dead, the duo of Marys stumbling upon his empty tomb, and being afraid at what they found. Until this service, I think I had not internalized that they were afraid, as they should have been in this scenario of possible body-snatching of their lord and savior.

That’s the last of discussion of actual religion, as I think the purpose of the story was to dive into the meat of a teachable moment: what do we do in times of despair? Forgive the self-centered nature of this diatribe, but this is a personal journal, so I’m going to talk about myself. I am faced with despair every day—despair over self-confidence, knowledge lack and loss, imposter syndrome, (in)efficiency of time usage, you name it. Not to mention despair that stems from outside my own grey matter—global warming, war, home prices, financial well-being, so many things that we can look at and feel dread on a day-to-day basis. The reverend hoped to push us to lead our lives with courage. Courage in the face of despair is the most noble, brave, and arguably effective response one can have. Stories of people overcoming obstacles rarely, if ever, include passages of someone just giving up completely in the face of failure.

However, at least for me, this is often difficult to manifest. Refer to the “warm, wet blanket of dopamine drips” from my very first post. Coming against a challenge pushes me often to find the easiest way to dodge the looming despair, or to retreat entirely to this numbing escape from the outside world, when it likely is more effective to take the situation head-on with courage. What causes this aversion to “doing the hard thing?” Arguably, it is likely a mixture of knowledge and addiction. Knowledge of the fact that I know that I will be okay in about 95% of the possible outcomes that lay directly ahead of me. I have struggled through loss and affliction before and survived, changed but without loss of self, so why should I worry about hard times ahead, even when they are at the work of my own (in)action? And there is the other side of this coin, addiction, where I see myself sinking into a pit of coddled brain-massaging chemicals, the mixture of serotonin and dopamine delivered via millions of pixels within inches of blue-tinted screen area. Is this a depressive tendency? Probably.

Let’s not try to be a downer for too long here. I don’t think this siren’s call to “slothitude” is currently at an all-time high. My brain knows the chemical addiction exists, so I can do the courageous thing and limit my daily scrolling (this sounds silly to actually write out), on the path to more productive and stimulating time usage. Looking toward hard work and difficult decisions has not filled me with dread in the past, so it should not now, and that should be internalized. Its possible that one source of the chemical addiction could be replaced with another, more productive one (this journal? running? some form of opus?). All this remains to be seen, but the next steps should be to list out options to occupy brain space and start to try them. To close out in an affirmative sense, I have done, am doing, and will continue to do hard things in the face of despair, personal and otherwise. What makes the personal despair more difficult to deal with is knowing that I have space in which to fail with little repercussion.

Listen in next time for more ramblings.

Avete,

Moi