Finding Hope When Despair Abounds
Wow. It’s been a month in Tech. There’s blood in the streets. Not exactly the dry January we were all contemplating.
January 4: Amazon (8,000), Salesforce (8,000)
January 18: Microsoft (10,000)
January 20: Google (20,000), Wayfair (1,750)
January 23: Spotify (900)
January 26: IBM (3,900)
And it ain’t over yet. The fat lady hasn’t even started warming up.
If my LinkedIn feed is to be believed, Big Tech really outdid itself this time. A few especially fortunate folks laid off while on maternity leave. Others woke up to find their laptops and smartphones oddly unable to connect to company servers. The lucky ones got a generic email. But hey, things are looking up from 2021 — when Better.com’s then CEO laid off 900 employees via a 5-minute Zoom call a few weeks before the holidays. At least they got video. In 2002 — right after the dotcom crash — I was once laid off en masse on a conference call.
The carnage was quickly followed by a series of supportive posts from former colleagues, career coaches and business gurus. How they knew exactly what it felt like. How they were ready to help in any way they could. How they pivoted from similar setbacks to something even better. How, in retrospect, it was the best thing that happened to them. The advice was well-intentioned, the feelings expressed genuine, the tone sympathetic. Maybe that stuff works for some people. Generally, my reaction to these still safely employed optimists is to take their advice and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.
So I’m not going to pretend I know anything about how anyone who recently lost their livelihood is feeling. As someone not actively working currently, I don’t have open roles or an active network to offer you. I won’t even try to make sense of the most recent time I was laid off. The truth is, I don’t quite remember. I think I spent most of my time curled up in the fetal position, hugging my favorite stuffy and eating pints of Hot & Sour soup (no wontons). Eventually a former colleague put me out of my misery by peeling me off the couch and helping me land my next gig. Or so my therapist tells me.
Getting laid off a few times. Enduring months of unemployment. Almost getting deported because my visa was weeks from expiring. Having your heart broken by your first love. Moving. Packing of any kind. Doing my taxes. Taking 2 graduate-level math courses in one semester. My college advisor thought that last choice would “build character.” I don’t know about that. Mostly, these life experiences — and a current one I write about here — are a great way to take a gap year or two — or three or four — in the Depths of Despair.
As I navigated these dark waters, I wondered about how others survived their own sojourns through Despair. I recently read about Admiral James Stockdale. Political buffs may recognize him as Ross Perot’s gaffe-prone running mate from the 1992 presidential election. During the Vietnam War, Stockdale was held prisoner in the infamous Hanoi Hilton for more than seven years. Years later, he was interviewed by Jim Collins, the author of Good To Great. Here’s what Stockdale said when he was asked about who didn’t make it out of prison alive — and why:
“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart… This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
Faith that you will prevail in the end while facing up to the most brutal facts of your current reality. That sounds an awful lot like Hope in the face of Despair, doesn’t it? Another prisoner — Andy Dufresne of Shawshank Redemption fame — reminds us that “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” Vaclav Havel — Czech author, statesman, President and one-time Communist dissident — writes powerfully about Hope in his 1990 book Disturbing The Peace. He distinguishes between what we most commonly perceive Hope to be and what it actually is:
“[T]he kind of Hope I often think about — especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison — I understand above all as a state of mind... Either we have hope within us, or we don’t… It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as… willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpromising the situation in which we demonstrate Hope, the deeper that Hope is. Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out… It is this Hope, above all, that gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.”
Every time I read those words, they make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But I’m not sure I ever completely understood the message. At least, not until a 12-year-old boy I know helped me make sense of it. A gregarious fellow who loves to talk but hates to read. A consummate lover of the outdoors with a surprisingly green thumb. A compulsive photographer of the natural world around him. He may only be months away from the teenage eye-rolling and door-slamming. And he may always be his little sister’s chief tormentor. But my son is in the midst of teaching his old man a really important lesson.
When I focus on the weeds in the garden, he is the first one to notice the crocuses. When I’m complaining about having to rake the leaves, he is jumping in them with glee. When I’m grumbling about the shorter days, he is marveling at the glory of the setting Sun. When I’m whining about yet another New England winter, he is pointing out how pretty the snow looks on the trees. And when I’m worrying about the cost of snowplows and gas bills from 7,000 miles away, he is writing a message in the snow for my Ring Cam viewing pleasure.
So I am trying to see the world anew through his eyes. Learning to observe with a sense of wonder. Looking for the good in all things. Focusing only on what truly matters. Noticing beauty in whatever form it appears before me. Appreciating the inexplicable magic of creation or circumstance that makes that beauty possible. Expressing gratitude for the chance I still have to experience it all. In so doing, I grow to understand that no matter how dark the clouds of my current Despair, they too shall pass. And I feel Hope again.
Thank you for reading!
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As the spirit moves you
So I may know that my writing spoke to you
If only for a fleeting moment.
