Despair is a bird

Despair is a bird disguised as a bear.

After having lived a bit of life and overcome many of its vicissitudes, a liberating realisation dawned on me - on how fragile despair is. As a compulsive “tweeter”, I immediately posted on X:

Over the years, the bear has sat on me many times and then morphed into a bird and flown away many times. Now whenever I am in the grip of it, I remind myself that it is a fleeting emotion, no matter how heavy it feels. To get to this point has not been so simple, but I have figured out the underlying process to it.

Despair is a bird disguised as a bear. It has a terrifying face, a large grizzly body and a confident, gutting voice that sounds much like our own. It tries to tell us that we have no purpose in the lives of others or of our own, that we are insignificant people, incapable of giving or receiving kindnesses, or something more or less around this. After all, we have our own unique sounding bears.

But these are not important details. The most important thing to remember about despair is that it feeds on trust. It grows bigger and bigger, the more we believe in it. Consequently, when we stop believing it, it loses its hold over us and begins to shrink.

To dispel despair is to reject the assertions it whispers into our heads. That by no measure is easy work, perhaps that is the hardest work of all. The ability to do that is rooted in our conviction that we must be the ultimate storytellers of our lives, not our parents, not our friends, not society, not even our own despair.

When we give away the pen that writes our story, we give in to despair. To hold that pen for life is to make a pledge to ourselves, a commitment that asks three things from us - imagination, will and faith.

Imagination gives us freedom to create a different reality to the one we’re given. When used well, it gives us a story that we feel compelled to act upon. In our will to act on it, lies our resolve. In our belief that we are not only a product of our circumstances, but we also have the tenacity to be its shapers, rests our faith.

Together, they metamorphose despair into the bird it really is and allow it to finally lift off our chests.