By Segun Durowaiye

On despair

Sir: Etymologically, the word, despair, comes to us from Latin –
From desperate to hope. And that is just what despair means- to be without hope, hopeless. It is everything concerning and related to being hopeless and hapless.

It induces a state of mind or feeling that can drive a person to suicide or murder or tragedy in one form or another.
“Despair abroad can always nurse pleasant thoughts of home.” Christopher Fry wrote in his play, ‘ A Phoenix Too Frequent.’ But this is only small comfort.

Of greater weight is the insight given by the French writer Jean Anouilh in his, ‘Antigone’.
At the climax of this play, the chorus enunciates his theory of tragedy, and in a long speech, praises tragedy, “clean, restful, flawless nature.”

He continues, “Tragedy is restful, and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it. There isn’t any hope, you are trapped. The whole sky has fallen on you and all you can do about it is to shout. Don’t mistake me, I said “shout”, I did not say groan, whimper, and complain. That you can’t do. But you can shout aloud; you can get all those things said that you never thought you’d be able to say…”

These thoughts and aphorisms bring us closer to, “The Dark Nights Of The Soul.”

A situation and condition where one thinks everything is over and one is doomed to fail and crash in lives’ various battles.
Honestly, human beings should not be pessimistic, hopeless and desperate in life because the Almighty God sees farther, brighter and better than we could ever think and imagine.

He is the harbinger of all good tidings in mundane life, while sitting on His hallowed throne in Heaven. He is the Alpha and Omega.
He always intervenes when all hopes seem lost and He would rescue us in our troubles.

There’s always a sparkling light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

Think about it.

Segun Durowaiye can be reached via 08055358655.