The Positive Role of Despair

I had just finished writing a letter yesterday to a friend who wasn't sure whether her new idea was born of desperation or inspiration, when I received an email from another friend in despair, sure that he'd never get his novel published.

When clients walk into a session declaring "I can't do it," "I'll never understand," and other variations of frustration, I've learned that will be the session in which they will have a breakthrough. A workshop participant spent half an hour last month telling me all the reasons why he couldn't possibly share his writing with anyone else. Two sessions later he did read his work and thanked the other participants for what he recognized as a transformation.

Despair may be a necessary step in creation. Any new idea, any new piece of writing, any new song, is based on past experience, old assumptions, old techniques. Partway through the process we find ourselves somewhere else, somewhere we had not intended to go. Instead of the landscape we saw ahead of us when we began the project, we find ourselves in a swamp, not knowing which tuft of grass will support us, where we should take the next step.

Arriving at the "I can't" or "I don't know" place is a signal that we're going in the right direction. We have already created something new. And we ourselves are not the same writers or singers or entrepreneurs who began the project. Despair arises when we try to force the project - and ourselves - into the old parameters with which we began.