When we find ourselves in the thick of disorder, uncertainty or loss, resilience can seem impossible, even trite, to hope for.
At the end of September, Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc on my community in western North Carolina. Businesses, homes and more than 100 lives were lost. Schools were closed for a month. There was no running water for nearly three weeks, and safe drinking water took far longer to come back. And yet, from Day 1, the community rallied. People were out with chain saws clearing roads; neighbors shared water, food and power sources; porches, backyards and storefronts turned into mini-congregations for daily gatherings and social support. Rebuilding will be a long and arduous process, but it is already underway.
Just over a month after the hurricane hit, Donald Trump was elected again as president. For many, myself included, considering the character of this new administration and its promises, despair has been a constant temptation.
In both North Carolina and on the national scene, it can feel like we are stymied in growth, in hope, in vigor. But every path of progress — both individual and collective — includes failures and downturns, even periods of hopelessness. In the immediate aftermath of disappointment and disorder, it is understandable to freeze or shut down. But eventually, we’ve got to rise up and move forward — if for no other reason than the alternative is worse.
Finding meaning and maintaining hope despite inevitable pain, loss and suffering is a crucial life skill. In 1949 the Holocaust survivor, psychiatrist and psychologist Viktor Frankl coined the term “tragic optimism” to describe this conundrum.
Tragic optimism emerged out of what Dr. Frankl observed to be the three tragedies that everyone faces (not only those of us who have seen the worst of the world, as he had). The first tragedy is pain, because we are made of flesh and bone. The second is guilt, because we have the freedom to make choices and thus feel responsible when things don’t go our way. The third is loss, because we must face the reality that everything we cherish is impermanent, including our own lives.
Tragic optimism means acknowledging, accepting and even expecting that life will contain hardship and hurt, then doing everything we can to move forward with a positive attitude anyway. It recognizes that one cannot be happy by trying to be happy all the time, or worse yet, assuming we ought to be. Rather, tragic optimism holds space for the full range of human experience and emotion, giving us permission to feel happiness and sadness, hope and fear, loss and possibility — sometimes in the same day, and even in the same hour.
Research shows that this sort of emotional flexibility is associated with resilience. For example, a study of U.S. college students after Sept. 11 found that those who could hold on to hope at the same time as loss demonstrated greater resilience and fewer depressive symptoms in the tragedy’s aftermath. This finding is not about denial or delusion. Most of the study participants experienced negative emotions such as anger, fear and sadness. It’s just that the more resilient ones were able to hold on to positive emotions, too.
Tragic optimism does not encourage actively seeking out or romanticizing suffering. Not everything has to be meaningful; sometimes things just suck. Rather, tragic optimism realizes the inevitability of suffering but also that we generally have at least some say in how we face it.
Difficult moments, both personal and collective, often lead to extreme behaviors: what’s now known as toxic positivity on the one hand — burying our heads in the sand and deluding ourselves that everything is great — or excessive pessimism and despair on the other. Both absolve us of doing anything about the situation.
Excessive optimism and delusion, at root, deny that anything is wrong; and if nothing is wrong, there is nothing to worry about and nothing to change. Extreme pessimism and despair are so grim they essentially say that any action would be pointless. Between these two poles exists a third way: committing to wise hope and wise action.
Wise hope and wise action ask us to accept a situation and see it clearly for what it is, and then muster the strength, courage and resolve to focus on what we can control. We remind ourselves that we have faced challenges before. We continue because to stand still is not an option.
Recognizing that we maintain agency fuels hope, and maintaining hope reminds us that we have agency.
Resilience comes down to a few core factors: leaning into community, being kind to yourself, finding small routines to support your mental health, allowing yourself to feel sadness and loss and yet maintain hope at the same time. It requires a commitment to taking productive action.
At a moment when it can seem that all is lost, we’d be wise to embrace tragic optimism, wise hope and wise action. In this we recognize we can exert our agency, even if limitedly, even if only in increments, however we can. These attitudes and skills, and our willingness to adopt and practice them, are essential to not only our individual resilience but that of our communities. We need both now.
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