It seems like something to be warded off with cheerfulness, or determination, or at least energetic avoidance, but there is something absolutely cathartic about coming face to face with one's own despair. No more fighting, no falsehood, the simple comfort of acknowledging one's own grief and desperation.

It's the desperation that is the tricky bit, after all it was the energy behind all of that laser-focused cheerfulness and energetic avoidance. Honestly, its a force to be reckoned with, but so is grief and exhaustion. 

One of the first benefits of despair is rest.

There comes a point when a person simply cannot push on, but, and here's a tip, what if you went ahead and not gone on, just for a moment or an hour, long before there's nothing left of you? Don't wait until giving up gives you nothing back. Give up early and beat the rush! 

Because it is possible to harness "giving up" with the same clever usefulness as "starting over." There are plenty of people who will tell you that you can start over at any time, but fewer are willing to admit that you can give up over and over again and still survive, continue, possibly even thrive. There are a lot of us who have given up just one less time than we have gotten up again. But, and here's what obnoxious optimists don't want to hear, sometimes giving up saves us. 

So the first benefit of falling back onto the fainting couch is that you're no longer struggling to stand. Toss the back of your hand against your forehead and sigh deeply. Cry a little. Write bad poetry. Howl at the moon. Complain bitterly to your pets or your garden. This is the first step in giving up. 

What if, through no fault of your own, of course, it turned out you weren't in charge of the circus and the monkeys? What if somebody else were, or what if no one was at all? 

At this point I must admit that this approach will be most interesting to people with a tendency to adopt circuses and monkeys with an eye to whipping them into shape, or because it seemed like no one else would do it, or for people who have found themselves inheriting circuses on the verge of collapse and have been so busy holding them up that they didn't have time to figure out if they really should. Maybe they were afraid. That's exhausting. 

So in the midst of resting and crying, and the expressive quality of awful poetry and the bitterest complaints, you may have gotten some relief, or, and this may take a lot of poetry, some insight. Perhaps you looked into the eyes of your tabby cat while bemoaning the state of the world and had the distinct impression that he had an opinion on the matter. Maybe you paused to imagine what that was. 

The truth of the matter is that you stopped holding up a failing circus for just long enough to have some different ideas. You've changed in some small way. Maybe barely enough to notice but like stepping on a butterfly in your time travels you have changed the world by giving up. Before you give up on giving up, there's more. 

The next benefit of despair is distinctly spiritual. What if you're not in charge? What if, in the big picture of the world, this isn't really your circus and those aren't your monkeys? Pausing mentally to release ownership of it all is not the same as changing your name and leaving town, it might feel like it, but it isn't. You don't even, ultimately, have to abandon anything or anyone to have a thought. Thoughts, as dangerous as they are, are free. There are Gods. We aren't them. 

If you look into the geological record you'll see more of crashing circuses and lost circus performers than any human heart could hold. And yet. And yet there were more layers of time and life after that. I know I am not as strong as layers of granite. I cannot contain the grief of even small collapses. But the heart of this earth is stronger than mine. I will have grief. I will see things fail. I will lose things I thought I couldn't lose, but life continues in amazing and new ways. Even if I can't imagine it, I cannot deny it. There is something new to come, always. 

The last benefit I can see today in despair is community. The problem with charging forward in manic positivity is that other people feel alone in their grief and fears, and we are not alone. We don't all feel the same fears, we don't all have the same imagined solutions, but the vast majority of us are dealing with being overwhelmed. If we can share with each other we can find common ground and common goals, but mostly we will realize how much we are not alone. If we have been wearing cheeriness as a shield and we are ready to lower our defenses, we will find a lot of nurturing and healing in one other. Our common despair is a part of our common humanity. We grieve because we can feel, it's very human of us. We're in this together. 

Despair is a signal. 

We are not failures. We are not alone. This is not the end of all things, but it will always be the end of some things. We need, sometimes, to give up entirely. This gives us a chance to start again. We may need to give up repeatedly, until there's enough of a shift in our world or ourselves to make a difference. Just get up one more time than you give up. We all do. 

Peace of the mountains to you, 

Paulie Rainbow