What follows is an article based on a comment I made to an article here:
Beyond Pessimism: The Bottomless Well of Tears
In every generation there arise thinkers who gaze into life and declare it intolerable. Schopenhauer, Camus, Ligotti, Cioran, Zapffe—each in their own way argued that life is either meaningless, absurd, or cruel. They spoke from the depths of disappointment, from the clash between expectation and reality.
I read these voices not as final authorities, but as waymarkers. They help us see the failure of shallow optimism. They strip away illusions. Yet if we stop at their conclusions, we remain stranded at the threshold of despair. Pessimism is not wisdom. It is only the beginning of wisdom.
The Trap of Expectation
“Expect nothing and you will never be disappointed.”
I return to this simple phrase often. For what is disappointment but the collision of our expectations with life as it is? The great pessimists expected life to deliver justice, clarity, or fulfillment—and then wrote long treatises when Life refused. In truth, their pessimism is a critique of their own misguided assumptions. Pessimism is an indulgence of the ego, that sense of our little self that wishes to protect and nurture itself before it breaks open like a seed into something greater and more fluid.
Life owes us nothing. But in that nothing, everything becomes possible. When we lay down our demands, when we stop insisting that existence should answer to us, we discover the quiet radiance of simply being here present in the present.
The Bottomless Well of Tears
Yes, there is sorrow. Each of us will descend, sooner or later, into what could be called the Bottomless Well of Tears. The collected tears of humanity from grief, loss, disillusionment - these are not cruel errors in the system. They are part of the human inheritance.
But here is the secret: if you truly descend to the bottom of that well, you will not find only despair. You will find it opening, like a hidden spring, into something vast and luminous. Infinite splendor. A depth that is not darkness but radiance.
The tears do not drown you; they dissolve the false walls around your heart. And when they fall away, all argument ceases. What remains is clarity, presence, and a strange release of joy seemingly without reason.
Toward Wisdom
Pessimism has its role. It reminds us that no external promise will save us. But once that lesson is learned, we must go deeper. Not into more arguments or more elaborate theories, but into the root of ourselves. Into silence, into being.
The great mistake is to believe despair is the end. In truth, despair is a threshold. Cross it fully, and you enter the territory of wisdom. There, life is no longer measured against our demands. It simply is—and in that is-ness, splendor quietly shimmers through everything.
“Pessimism is the tendency to see existence under the shadow of inevitable misfortune, where every hope fades before the weight of suffering and fate.”
Ah, another timely article for me as I had a bout or dip into the pity-party-pool last night over some weird stuff happening. My mother used to say 'crying doesn't help' yet I find it does help indeed. It rids the body of toxins and I feel SO much better after a good cry, sort of like a vomit rids one of that queasy feeling. And another overused but accurate saying is that "things will look better in the morning after". Yesterday is passe' and today is anew. I do tend to lean towards the pessimistic side of things mainly because when things turn out better than hoped for (not expected though) it's such a pleasant high for me. And if it remains so-so or not so good, I just go about my business and plow on and will even look for the good stuff that I know to be there even when I must create it myself. Who else will I rely on?