bowl
Audio


bowl
Books & CDs




Tales by Category

bowl
All Tales


bowl
Psychological


bowl
Social / Political


bowl
Media


bowl
Philosophical /
Spiritual


bowl
Hmmm . . . ?




bowl
Copyright & Use Info


bowl
Permissions



      

THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND

    Once the Slough of Despond wondered how it was going to get through the rest of the day.
    Listening to the instructions given the chat show audience on how loudly to sigh at the heartrending accounts of life obstacles met with by the featured guests and when to applaud the warm, healing hug each would receive from the host just before a commercial break, the Slough of Despond began to slump in its chair and look at the floor.
    What on earth had induced it to spend hours waiting in line for tickets to this charade? The half-hearted promise to neighbors back home to wave whenever the cameras panned the audience certainly wasn’t worth the embarrassment of being seen by millions sitting here among the nodding heads as authors with the gift of gab detailed their miserable childhoods, then quoted inspirational self-help pointers at the back of their books to help cope with every setback in life, no matter how large or small.
    Or the host’s sudden stunt of passing out car keys to everybody, as if taking a spin in a shiny new car was the fastest way to feel better about yourself, to see the “personal empowerment” of material success as the road to “exploring your inner potential.” Or, put another way, to accepting “you are what you own” as the default rule of life and without that, you’re nothing? Was the Slough of Despond the only one not jumping up and down and squealing with delight?
    Perhaps it was being too critical, though. When so many were convinced not simply that “feeling like a million” was easier if you had a few mil yourself but that “rags to riches” was synonymous with “self-realization,” suggesting otherwise could seem churlish and get you labeled a “crusty curmudgeon,” an out-of-touch crank.
    But was it really crankiness to think a childhood might amount to something more than the reason you didn’t feel so good about yourself as an adult? Not to mention the possibility that reducing experience to a catalog of horrors you claimed to be overcoming one by one only meant you hadn’t really succeeded in defining yourself apart from them yet? So you’d overcome what by ticking off your triumphs?
    If you wanted to show a mastery of the past, then admitting that its darkness couldn’t be wholly dispelled by studio lights and happy-chat on a plywood-and-plastic set must surely be the first step. Otherwise the mismatch between now and then would be like thin ice over the unfathomed deep. Even this way of putting it left the Slough of Despond uneasy, though, for the words failed to measure the contrast. “Thin ice” and “unfathomed deep” had no more meaning than the clichés traded here by those who supposedly had suffered enough to know better. 
    In this chirpy din, who would ever hear the settled voice of darkness? Its pledge never to mislead, never to pretend reality is other than it is or can be talked away, and yet to offer solace in that. For if you could listen honestly to the sad truths of life, you might, just might, draw the strength not to deny them.  And not denying them, you might, just might, shape them into an affirmation, into a Ninth Symphony, a David, or a Sunflower. And you might escape trivializing human resilience with this fatuous prattle about life changes made on the cheap.
    Then again, however, you might end up like the Slough of Despond, sitting here alone in an empty TV studio and wondering how to carry on after what it had just seen and heard.