Love in a Time of Despair

I read a thoughtful, evocative essay by Maria Popova today, her weekly blog post called The Marginalian

There are a couple of lines in the essay that grabbed me. Here’s one:  “The transmutation of despair into love is what we call meaning.” She was echoing the sentiment of Oliver Sachs who wrote on the subject of despair between WW I and II.

I committed to memory something another hero of mine said in a lecture: “Whatever happens to any human being can happen to me.” Bo Lozoff wrote We’re All Doing Time, and with his wife Sita, started the Human Kindness Foundation. He also started The Prison Ashram project which helps incarcerated people find love again, even though many who find it will never get to express it in freedom again.

This is the kind of radical psychology that Nelson Mandala embraced, and which allowed Viktor Frankl to survive four concentration camps and then write Man’s Search for Meaning.

We owe it to our children to continue to resist whatever injustice and violence is set loose upon the world, dished out by despots and their followers. It is important to remember though, that our fight to transform despair into action be done with hope, and without losing the ability to have compassion for those who believe our extermination is the only sensible way forward.