Everybody seeks success and realizing his dreams. With the passage of time, some achieve their goals, while others cannot make their dreams come true. As days elapse, man grows old, and his hopes shrink until he reaches despair and stops.
However, the fact that, “Despair is a myth” is forgotten by many, though they repeat it. Indeed, it has become a much-ado-about-nothing! Thus, people think they live, though, as they despair, much of the significance of their life is lost.
Today, I’d like to tackle the despair that alights upon those in their fifties and makes refrain from attempting to succeed. Victor Hugo writes, “The fifties mark late youth!” So, as we go through history, in an attempt to recall some of its incidents, we will find Frank McCourt and Laura Ingalls Wilder who became famous novelists after the age of sixty.
McCourt (1930-2009) led an ordinary life. He was a teacher at a high school in New York. Yet, he became a famous novelist after the publication of his “Angela’s Ashes”. He was sixty-six then! He had always wanted to become a writer, and it was fulfilled, only for him to influence Americans of Irish origin and win the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Awards! McCourt says, “You can do something good, in spite of your circumstances.”
Likewise, Wilder (1867-1957) achieved success upon the publication of her children’s series “Little House on the Prairie”. She started her tuition career at the early age of sixteen to sustain her family. At eighteen, she got married, only to spend ten years in helping her husband in farming to sustain her family as well. She embarked on writing in 1910, and was able to have her first children’s series published at the age of sixty-five, to be followed by other writings!
True, we have to pass by pain and despair. Yet, we should leave them fast in order not to waste the value of our time. So, when despair seeps through your mind, remember this phrase, “Do not despair if you don’t achieve a particular thing. Try again. A rain drop does not dig hole through violence, but through repetition.” True defeat is the reign of despair.
General Bishop
Head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center
