[ the convenience of ] Despair

Despair is convenient and misery is unfashionably easy, in many ways, boring.

In a world already saturated with darkness, fixating on negativity requires little effort. It's the path of least resistance. Complaining, lamenting and surrendering to emotional chaos demands almost nothing from us. Which is precisely why it's so common.

Our Habits

What's far less accessible is the work of maintaining an inner state that is not constantly disturbed by external events. Remaining grounded and emotionally regulated is labor. We're deeply physical beings and because of this we heavily rely on the external world to inform our inner reality. We allow other people, circumstances and fleeting events to dictate our emotional landscape far more than we realize.

It is easier to narrate one's exhaustion, bitterness or disillusionment than to quietly adjust their inner posture to continue without spectacle.

A simple example of this restraint is choosing to scroll past something you disagree with rather than announcing your irritation or leaving a cutting comment online. That refusal to react, to be seen, or validated in your displeasure, often requires more discipline than the reaction itself. And while I know this likely doesn’t apply to you (or anyone reading esa), it remains an undeniable feature of the culture we’re all swimming in.

This is not to say that moments of despair should be denied or suppressed. The experience of discouragement, confusion or grief is a part of being human. But speaking from experience, there is a noticeable difference between passing through those emotions and descending into them.

In other words following the spiral, cataloguing everything that is wrong, analyzing its failures, rehearsing hopelessness and confusion, requires far less effort than interrupting the rabbit hole to deliberately shift one's mental orientation.

Our choice

The choice to remain unaffected without becoming ignorant requires discipline. Finding good or even neutrality in a situation is a practiced skill. It requires self-awareness, restraint, and a willingness to take responsibility for one's internal state.

We live in a time marked by noticeable lack of accountability, particularly when it comes to emotional self-governance. People are slacking. Not only in their commitments, but in the quiet unglamorous work of self-mastery.

While humans are naturally emotional creatures, adulthood was once understood as the stage where we learned how to hold the reins of emotions. Somewhere along the way, many of us let them go.

Misery is makes us predictable. Brighter thinking requires effort and maintenance. A culture that normalizes emotional anguish may eventually forget what joy and steadiness looks like. Misery can be acknowledged, but it shouldn’t be broadcasted, or treated as an identity.

Xo,

Pharyn