I Cheerfully Refuse

The reasons for despair are legion. But I cheerfully refuse.

With the title to his new novel, my friend Leif Enger, in only three words, raised a belligerent banner for our times: I Cheerfully Refuse. The story gives us grief-stricken Rainy aboard his sailing sloop as he skippers across Lake Superior and tries to navigate a battered future. “As far as enemies go,” says a beleaguered Rainy, “despair has every ounce of my respect.”

The wondrous thing about a story is how each of us can find ourselves right in the center of the action, even if our own particulars couldn’t be more different. My grief is distinct from Rainy’s, but I know the ache. I know despair’s dark, voracious pull. Despair can wreck a soul. As enemies go, it’s got all my respect. While Leif employs his line in a different way than I do here (and I’ll let you enjoy the pleasure of that discovery), the words took me down an interior path. Good writing does this.

Despair — and its cousin cynicism — are prime seductions in our age of disillusion. Despair is not the experience of grief, anxiety, or regret, but a surrender of the self, a commitment to ruin, a final abandonment of hope. Despair turns us small and inward. Despair makes us suspicious, conspiratorial, and vengeful. Despair robs our joy. Despair throws a grim, grey shadow over our future, our loves, our memory. Despair ravages and ruins until all that’s left is a brittle corpse riddled with grievance or greed, listless gloom, unbridled rage. Despair — a lethal enemy.

Despair rebuffs the God who is unending love and hope and faith. When we give ourselves to despair, we forget the true story of One who has already entered the hell of human violence and ruin, and who is, even now, banishing evil and drawing all of creation to God’s new day.

But to resist despair is not at all to suggest there aren’t immense troubles and treacheries. The enemy is formidable. There’s much to grieve, much to give us worry. In shocking moments, we are helpless to protect our children from unexpected threats and dangers. The doctor delivers bad news that cuts us low. The money’s run out, with no relief in sight. Fear sinks its talons into our psyche. Our public life feels like a nuclear reactor ready to blow. Here, honesty demands we give despair its due. We tip our hat. I see your point, we say. I can’t exactly say you’re wrong.

But we straighten our spine. We steel our courage and turn again to Love’s steady song. We remember the deeper, truer story. And we cheerfully refuse.

Writing is a way I refuse despair and listen to the good, long story. Writing is my attempt to tell the truth, wrangle with the wreckage and always, always cling to the beauty.

I hope you’ll join me. Together, we can cheerfully refuse.

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