Yes, I know. The jokes about despair and Darks Souls are easy. A person does probably need to be a little masochistic to put themselves through this.
But, as before, I think Dark Souls can teach us something about despair. Look up despair and the definition is the complete loss of hope. That is a truly frightening idea, to feel like there’s no chance that things will ever get better, but, unfortunately, it’s something that seems to be close to the surface in 2020.
In Dark Souls, I see despair as a parallel to going hollow. As we talked in past videos, going hollow happens when a character in Dark Souls fails one too many times. Those that have gone hollow lose who they are. They give up whatever quest they were on and either lash out at any who come close, be they friend or foe, or they simply sit down and, well, do this.
Despair doesn’t suddenly happen to us, it’s born and grows. As I’ve thought about my own life, I trace despair back to frustration and discouragement. These two, I guess I’ll call them lesser emotions, are part of being human. We all experience them. In reality, frustration and discouragement can sometimes be a positive thing. We try, we fail, we become more determined, and we move forward. That’s good. The bad happens when we let our challenges overwhelms us. That light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be a train and when it hits us, we’re left broken and alone in the darkness. That’s where despair is born.
Despair is dangerous. It can lead us to really bad choices, even the ultimate choice that we don’t want to continue our life any longer. It can also lead to animosity toward others. In our despair, we look around for someone to blame and when we identify “those people,” they become our enemy. It snuffs out whatever compassion, love, and understanding we have for one another and we become hollow.
Of course, we can be antagonistic toward each other without feeling despair. But even when we fight, if we still feel some hope, that allows some sliver of empathy to remain. If that’s true, I believe we can find common ground to build upon with almost anyone, regardless of their personal beliefs. I believe most of us hope for a better tomorrow for ourselves, our families, our communities. What that tomorrow looks like may look a bit different depending on who you talk with, but that hope is something that isn’t confined to a particular ideology or political viewpoint. People with that hope can find ways to work together and move forward.
Now I suppose there are some people who’s “hope” is that anyone who disagrees with them is silenced, punished, and destroyed. I would argue that those folks don’t really understand what hope is. That sounds like spite, jealousy, and revenge.
Anyway back to Dark Souls. One of the parts of the game that I most enjoy is helping the other NPCs in their quests. Anri and Siris stand out. It’s weird to mention Dark Souls and uplifting in the same sentence, but I feel good when I help these two characters fulfill their own goals. Now, I’m not saying go out and help someone fight someone else like you do for Anri and Siris. This part of my Dark Souls analogy is strictly metaphorical. Violence is the least useful means of settling differences, and generally leads to the less successful outcomes. And yes, I know that Dark Souls doesn’t really have a happy ending for anyone, but for a little while at least, you helped these two characters out and brought them some peace.
In my experience, service to others is one of the best ways to combat discouragement and frustration, even despair. It is nearly impossible to drown in your own problems when you’re thinking of how you can help someone else. It’s easy to look at the big problems of the world and feel like we can’t do anything to make a difference. But what would happen if, every day, every person in the world set a goal to help out one person? I’m not talking about huge gestures. It could be buying a sandwich for someone on the street, helping an old lady carry in her groceries, it could even be as simple as giving someone a smile and hello as you walk past them. I can remember being in the grocery store and some elderly lady turned to me and told me she thought I was very handsome. It put a smile on my face, and I still remember it to this day.
I’m sure some people would scoff at this idea. Such little acts of kindness can’t possibly matter when there’s war, disease, crime, poverty, and all other things that afflict us. I would counter that if everyone spent some of their day thinking about how to help another, would we still have as many problems in our world?
Listen, I’m not naive. We’ve got some big challenges that we need to overcome and there’s a lot of doom, gloom, pessimism and divisiveness right now. I see all that, yet I choose to be optimistic. I firmly believe there is more good in our world than there is bad. There are people who thrive on chaos and contention, and, unfortunately, those folks seem to get a lot of attention, but I believe those folks are the minority. Just take a look at any of the countless faith in humanity-type videos out there on YouTube. They make me ugly cry every time.
Don’t let discouragement and frustration linger in your life long enough for despair to take root. Above all, don’t give up hope that tomorrow can be a better day.