“The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.” – David Thoreau
In today’s world, that quote would read, “the mass of people,” in order to be politically correct. This applies to all people, not just the male population. As I have aged, this is one of the most damaging human conditions I have personally witnessed.
What does quiet desperation look like? Feel like? It could be a child/young adult feeling trapped in an extremely dysfunctional household. They can’t leave and their entire day is filled with stress, worry, anxiety, and fear. It could be a married female, realizing she is in an unloving, destructive, and toxic marriage, but she has kids and her fear of loss and her desire for financial security causes her to choose to stay, coping by addictive eating, alcohol or taking anxiety or depression drugs just to get through the day. It could be a married male realizing they have chosen the wrong profession but his wife, their standard of living and his identity and friends would be significantly altered if he made the choice to follow his passion and change careers. It could be the person who knows their true sexual identity is different than the one they feel they have to portray in order to be loved and accepted by family and friends.
Now imagine, with me, a person who is a product of all three of these; quiet desperation in childhood, quiet desperation of sexual identity, and now quiet desperation as an adult male/female? Why imagine? Because these people are our spouses, our neighbors, our co-workers and our friends, and quite possibly ourselves.
We aren’t designed or meant to live lives of quiet desperation. One doesn’t have to live this way. At some point we have a choice. It starts as a thought, a dream, a hopefulness that if fed and nurtured can alter the course of one’s future. It’s never too late. It’s never too late. It’s never too late!
If you, the reader, are honest with yourself and know you are living a life of quiet desperation, perhaps this thought will help you make a most necessary decision; you aren’t living, you are just existing and mentally, emotionally, and spiritually dying a slow death.
