A Common Form of Despair

On Kierkegaard and Cyndi Lauper

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” - Søren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard was big on despair. I mean, he wasn’t a fan, exactly. But he sure talked about it a lot. And honestly he didn’t think despair was really such a bad thing as long we acknowledge it and let it teach us.
Stay with me.

Fitting in is so important to us as humans – in fact, we’re programmed with a bias toward group cohesion. (See Elizabeth Kolbert’s article in New Yorker – Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds)

A strong ability to work together in groups is what kept our ancestors alive – and us too! So when we experience group rejection, we can experience physical pain in the same parts of the brain as an injury. We want so badly to fit in, and we need to.

Kierkegaard didn’t like all that if it came from a place of conformity and pressure from a group instead of being true to ourselves. Thus he describes the despair of not being who you are.

And while I do think Kierkegaard goes a little far on some points, I also resonate with what he says about despair. Not being who you are is a particular kind of hell I don’t want to live in.

Especially when you know who you are and have to hide a part of you.

Many of us can relate with this kind of despair: of desperately wanting to be who we really are but not feeling that we would be accepted. It can be so exhausting trying to play the game, trying to pretend all the time, trying to be someone you’re not. More than exhausting, it can lead to true despair. Whether it’s code switching or hiding your sexuality, many people face actual harm if they are their true selves in certain spaces. They know Kierkegaard’s despair.

When I saw Cyndi Lauper in concert, she said that some songs are bigger than we are. Sometimes a song takes on a life of its own and becomes a movement.
Then she began the opening bars of True Colors.

You with the sad eyes
Don't be discouraged
Oh I realize
It's hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small
But I see your true colors

Sure, we all show different parts of ourselves in different contexts. It’s usually not socially acceptable to say everything that’s on our mind at every moment.

But that’s not the despair Kierkegaard is talking about. Being who we truly are, showing our whole selves and being accepted and loved, that is the antidote to this kind of despair - when we are seen.

My prayer for all of us and for our world, is that we would cultivate more spaces to see one another’s whole selves. That we would find places that affirm our whole selves and show all of our true colors. To cultivate spaces of hope in the face of despair.

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~What I’m reading~

The Widow’s Guide to Skulduggery by Amanda Ashby

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