When All Else Fails . . . What Makes You Go On?

This article is a contribution of the editor-in-chief of The Channel year 1997, Chona T. Chin.

Despair . . . The most common dilemma of each individual as a part of life’s struggle. It makes it chilly presence felt in any form of catastrophe wherein oftentimes the "senseless" word is being attached. Once faced with this, one cannot help but confront it squarely. After all, each of us has come to know that living is never easy. The underlying question then was . . . what makes a person faced with disheartenment continue to dwell the emptiness of his naked existence? If you want look for the answers, you would find that there’s no definite cure to despair. It is a force, a spirit within us, but in the end it is still a choice. In some moments in each of our lives, we each decide whether to throw away our despair or our hope. In the face of life’s outbreaks, which shall we choose? Hope or despair?

She was born with a complete sight, hearing and speech ability, but she acquired sickness and almost died. She became blind, deaf, and mute. She then grew up to be a difficult child. She was hopeless and rude as expected from a child who couldn’t see, talk, or hear. It was when she met a wonderful teacher Ms. Sullivan who became an instrument nor her journey to learning. Eventually, the once difficult child became one of the world’s inspirations and an icon to those who are physically handicapped. She was Hellen Keller, one of the world’s most renowned inspirational writers.

A colored girl from a broken family who lived in a poor neighborhood with her mother was constantly abused sexually by male relatives. It ended when she moved to her father who was then strict and disciplinarian when she was 14. She struggled with drug addiction and lost a baby during her adolescence. Then she was able to secure a scholarship, went to a university and eventually changed her life. She is now one of America’s richest and most influential woman. She uses her wealth and power to help and inspire other people. She is the famous Ophrah Winfrey.
During World War II, a young doctor was unjustly imprisoned and put in the concentration camps for almost three years without knowing the whereabouts of his loved-ones. The belief of one day he would be reunited with his beloved gave him faith and survived him despite of torment, hunger, humiliation, and the possibility of being exterminated. Only to discover that only his sister was able to escape earlier. His father, mother, brother and wife were either died in hostile concentration camps, of hunger or were sent to gas oven. But such suffering never stopped him to go on with life. He proposed that there can be meaning in suffering and that searching for this meaning is just enough to go on. He married again, have children, continued his medical profession. He is now one of the most respected persona in psychology who introduced Logotheraphy as his approach in existential counseling. Sir Victor Emil Frankl, writer of inspirational books, doctor, psychologist, therapist and survivor of holocaust.

This boy’s mother died when he was nine. He lost his brother when he was twelve. The only family he had was his father who also died of starvation during the 2nd World War when he was twenty. Darkness, hopelessness and death were in every corner of his once Nazi free country. He worked as a stone breaker, factory worker and a stage actor just to earn a living. Most of his friends died also of hunger, deprivation, and injustices including his best friend priest who was executed for reasons of helping the Jewish community. Almost all of the people he knew having been suffered the senseless brutality questioned God’s existence. However, even for a second he never lost his faith, he studied in the seminary secretly, he survived, fought and thought a lot of people. He became a humble priest. His endeavor won him to be one of the most respected religious leaders in the world. He attempted to unite all kinds of religious leaders with different beliefs, became an inspiration and beloved not only to the catholic communities. He was one of the most beloved priests, Karol Wojtyla most remembered as the great POPE JOHN PAUL II.
What does it mean to choose the path of hope? It means we continue to labor for decency amidst in a conflicted society. It means that we refuse to be isolated and withdrawn, but face life’s flaws and imperfections and never give up on life.

From the fragments of our experiences, at times we came to find strategies in preserving our hope. Everything seems to be tolerable by merely imagining the images of a beloved person, by faith in God, by a little sense of humor and or even by glimpses of nature. But not all of these establish a desire to be hopeful unless we search for the large sense of our suffering. At times anticipating for hope seemed to be irrational, even then, even now, hope as a reason to go on with life is something else. It is a thing of beauty, an unexplainable splendor that makes life worth going on.