"To be in despair is not only the worst misfortune and misery - no, it is ruination." - Anti-Climacus, 1849

Roughly summarized, despair is having the negative desire of wanting not to exist or lacking the positive desire to want to exist. Suffering, tragedy, and misery does not entail despair, unless such suffering leads to the person wanting to die or lacking the desire to live. For Kierkegaard, the latter is just as serious as the former in terms of despair.

However, even if one wants to live, that is still not sufficient to allieve despair. For Kierkegaard, to want to exist as ourselves is the very opposite of despair. [...]

To avoid despair is to have the conscious desire to want to exist as ourselves regardless of whatever life throws at you. Even if one knows one is going to die eventually due to human mortality, as long as one has the desire to want to continue to exist as ourselves in spite of our mortality, it would not be considered normal Kierkegaardian despair.

The notion of Logotherapy was created with the Greek word logos ("meaning"). Frankl's concept is based on the premise that the primary motivational force of an individual is to find a meaning in life. The following list of tenets represents the basic principles of logotherapy:

• Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones.
  
• Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.
  
• We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering.
  

The human spirit is referred to in several of the assumptions of logotherapy, but it should be noted that the use of the term spirit is not "spiritual" or "religious". In Frankl's view, the spirit is the will of the human being. The emphasis, therefore, is on the search for meaning, which is not necessarily the search for God or any other supernatural being. Frankl also noted the barriers to humanity's quest for meaning in life. He warns against "...affluence, hedonism, [and] materialism..." in the search for meaning.

Discovering meaning

According to Frankl, we can discover meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value - nature, a work of art, another person, i.e., love; (3) by suffering. On the meaning of suffering, Frankl gives the following example:[INDENT] Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now how could I help him? What should I tell him? I refrained from telling him anything, but instead confronted him with a question, "What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?:" "Oh," he said, "for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!" Whereupon I replied, "You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it is you who have spared her this suffering; but now, you have to pay for it by surviving and mourning her." He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left the office.
- Viktor Frankl
[/INDENT]Frankl emphasized that realizing the value of suffering is meaningful only when the first two creative possibilities are not available (for example, in a concentration camp) and only when such suffering is inevitable - he was not proposing that people suffer unnecessarily

According to Frankl, we can discover meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value - nature, a work of art, another person, i.e., love; (3) by suffering.

So do you stand for anything, or just against things? So far today I get that you're against, let's see, God, love, religion, deeds, and purpose. So what would be, in your book, something to be for, an antidote to despair, something which somehow makes suffering worthwhile?

All I'm trying to say is you can't be firm on purpose otherwise you set up a trap. For example, what if we were to say that the purpose of living is to find love. Well what happens to those who never find it? You now set up the cause for their suffering. It doesn't need to be there. I think trying to pin down purpose actually causes problems. If you try to define your being through your life, when there is an "accident" that causes a change it would effect you more to lose or to change because of it. I think that is unnecessary suffering.

I am not against those things. I am saying pinning yourself down to say these things are great things because they give your life purpose and meaning is a dangerous prospect. You set yourself up for a devastation if they happen to change. The thing we can rely on too is that things will change, you can guarantee that. Since change is constant, then expecting these things to bring purpose will always lead to suffering. So I say abandon the notion that these things are good because they give existence a purpose.

I am saying you don't need a purpose. You don't need a motivation to live. You don't need to have these things to be a happy or content person. Once you realize this, you can be free of them. It is a cage to think they are necessary to have a meaningful life.

It's possible that I'm misreading this (or just that we're such different people that we're talking at cross-purposes ... no pun intended!), but it seems as if you identify the concept of purpose with that of an exclusive obsession, one which can hold despair temporarily at bay, but which is indeed a trap, pinning you down, as you say, and setting you up for devastating despair should it fail for some unforeseen reason.

What you seem to be arguing for (again, unless I'm misreading you completely) is a kind of openness to what life brings. But what life brings may be a purpose, or purposes; and if, for any reason, you find yourself in despair (which it seems you do not, and perhaps you never have?) - perhaps, indeed, because of the collapse of a defensive and exclusive obsession, as indeed happened to me - I still say that only a sense of purpose can give you the will to stand up to that despair. You can't stand on your own against despair; you have to stand for something.

But it is vain of me merely to repeat this assertion; I don't know how to argue for it, or make it more understandable.

I think that perhaps that word 'ego' might help. The kind of purpose you seem to have in mind is set and defined by the ego, whereas the kind of purpose I have in mind is acknowledged by the ego as coming from somewhere higher. I don't mean 'higher' in the sense of more powerful, but in the sense of more inclusive, a being of which one is a part, and in which one has a place - and which might have more than one purpose in mind.

Sometimes I use too many parentheses, when I'm struggling to put a thought together; sorry if this has been hard to read!

Well what you are beginning to sound like is what I consider a false hope. I don't attach any extra baggage onto anything like that if that is indeed what you are doing. I think the fewer expectations you place on life, the better off you are in the long run. I can't guarantee that though. If you have to lie to yourself to get through the day, and that is what motivates you, I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing. But if it becomes an outlet that is expressed openly you might find conflict from it.

Many would refer to me as a nihilist but actually I'm not. I would rather consider myself a realist, since I accept all things that happen equally without asking why I was dealt these circumstances. You can not always win eventually you will lose. That might sound negative but I consider it being accepting to the fact that things will not always go your way or turn out how you want them to. I let things be except this does not prevent me from trying to make things better according to how I view the world. I might object to something, but that doesn't mean I just let it continue. If it is mutually beneficial I should try to do something about it.

i sometimes think that there is a despair gene...it seems to me that some of us are destined not to be happy, even if we are logically aware that there is no reason for us not to be. i very much admire krumple's philosophy, which i myself adhere to in a way-i should say i admire the way he practices it properly, because somehow it didnt set me free from becoming despondent. it is enough to help me survive until the episode is finished, since for me it comes in intervals which dont seem to have any particular catalyst, either physical or mental.

i am not sure if there is a difference between despair and depression-i think despair hurts while depression is a total numbness. despair is the absence of hope and depression is the lack of interest in everything.

the problem with meditation is that you arent able to do it when you need it most