The Antidote to Despair
A life focused on the self is one that involves a pronounced degree of suffering. We all suffer — but when your focus is inward, suffering becomes more than an experience. You begin to claim it as your own, as if it uniquely belongs to you.
I don't believe we can ever be fully free from suffering. But I do believe we can reduce it by becoming the self that God intends us to be, rather than constructing and chasing our own version — which, in truth, is an impossible task.
This distinction is best articulated in The Sickness Unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard. In that book, Kierkegaard explores despair and its antidote: faith. One form of despair, as he describes it, is the desire to be one's own self — to want to be someone other than who you were created to be.
Each of us is born with innate gifts, talents, and psychological predispositions. Wanting to be one's own self, in the Kierkegaardian sense, is a denial of those God-given traits. A rejection — conscious or not — of what has been bestowed upon us for a purpose. It is only by embracing that purpose that we begin to step off the path of despair.
I walked that path for a long time. Convinced that pursuing my own version of self would bring me salvation, I eventually lost faith in God's ability to take care of me and turned outward to other gods — idols, of a kind. These came in the form of gangsters and hedonists, people who seemed to embody the clearest expression of having their own self. In almost every case, I found that they suffered immensely on the inside, consumed by the pursuit of their own self-interest.
Escaping despair through faith means embarking on the path of self-discovery and self-mastery. It may take time to hear the voice of God — to remember the inclinations you had as a child, before the expectations of others began to shape you. We are constantly influenced by powerful voices urging us to become more like them. Your work is to resist that and return to the self God created.
This is reflected in an ancient saying: Know yourself, control yourself, give yourself.
These are not three separate ideas. They are three stages of the same journey.
The first is self-knowledge — discovering who you are at your core, the self God created. This is where the journey begins and where most people stall. The second is self-mastery — the apprenticeship stage. You begin to hone your gifts, develop discipline, and make your abilities of use to yourself and to others. The third is self-giving — the stage of the journeyman or master. Your gifts, refined through discipline, are ready to be offered in service. It is here that despair begins to fade, replaced by purpose. And purpose, grounded in faith, is the only true antidote to suffering.
If this resonates, I recommend Mastery by Robert Greene. It traces this same three-stage process in detail, drawn from the lives of historical masters across every field.
If you can't access the book, start with silence. Before anything else, you must know yourself. It is in stillness — through meditation, walking, or whatever quiets the noise — that you begin to hear the voice of God.
