Hardship is both highly subjective and also acutely objective. One could lament (justly or unjustly) the loss of a private jet as a hardship just as one would struggle to grapple with the loss of a friend or income or reliable access to healthcare. Regardless of the specifics or perceived validity of the privation, hardship is always accompanied by the loss of something. And losing things is by definition something we do not want to happen. It brings grief, anxiety, and even despair.
Some may wonder at my silence these past few months. Others know that I lost my job. I’ll avoid the specifics, but suffice it to say, my job, company and industry effectively disappeared overnight leaving me not only without employment but drifting somewhat aimlessly in a sea of fragmented networks, dismembered vocational identity, and a startling absence of clear next steps. What does one do in such waters?
These months of cold outreach on LinkedIn and random coffees with extremely gracious strangers have produced a wide variety of emotional responses and perhaps an unhealthy degree of introspection. I’ve grappled with the pangs of self-doubt (and even, in my weaker moments, divine-doubt), an overwhelming sense of purposelessness, and perhaps most crippling of all for a middle child: the inescapable sense of failure.
As one who came of age at the tail end of the postmodern era, I am naturally imbued with the postmodern hallmark of cynicism. As with many of the flaws in postmodernist thinking, I find myself kicking against impulses (fleeting as they thankfully are) of nihilism and despair, especially in the midst of hardship. There is, however, another impulse that sometimes rears its confusing head, ushering a since of unfounded embrace of that which I know to be naive and illogical. This new tendency reveals my late-stage tinge of metamodernism, the Western psychosocial viewpoint that has emerged in the last 10-15 years.
This new zeitgeist is characterized by a sort of reconciliation—or more accurately, forced pairing—of the naive optimism of modernity and the deep-seated skepticism of postmodernity. It recognizes and then unironically embraces absurdity as something worthwhile albeit odd or even inauthentic (a mortal sin for postmodernists, see: every millennial coffeeshop). Metamodernists are aware of the cheesy, the vapid and yet, desperate for meaning that postmodernists were comfortable to frown away, they embrace it and even elevate it. Why else would there be a Creed resurgence?
The shift between postmodernism and metamodernism reflects the ebb and flow of this particular period of hardship for me. I waiver between the crushing weight of unemployment and vocational purposelessness and the optimism that that transformational phone call will come, absurd as it typically feels to believe. However, this oscillating sense of brooding pessimism and unfounded optimism is still dominated by a looming sense of despair. Yet, I feel comfortable saying this despair would be all-consuming were it not for a Ballast that transcends fickle, ever-shifting cultural perspectives and X-driven narratives.
Hope, in the metamodern sense, is still largely derived from inward compulsion. While this new perspective characterizes an era that “yearns for a new beginning,” it still relies on a boot-straps approach to achieving a new dawn. By valuing affect over logic, metamodernists rely on feeling, as incoherent as it may be, to drive progress. As inspirational as this may first appear, it fails to account for our individual limitations, and elevates our will above all else. This charge—to compel positivity through deeper self actualization and synthesization of naive optimism and logic-driven nihilism—is crushing. The entirety of success sits squarely on our individual ability. And drawn out to its macro-level inevitability, societal good is also contingent solely on our collective ability to gin up positivity and progress from a well of inner strength that is itself self-depleting as hardship demands exponentially more strength. Further, this inversely means that failure and regression and brokenness and darkness are not only our doing, but precisely due to our inevitable failure to harness enough self actualization to turn the individual or collective tide.
Stay with me.
I struggled in deciding when to publish this piece. Should I react in the immediate throes of vocational collapse with raw emotion? Should I wait until I have actually secured another job and end with a hopeful note that all will work out? I’ve opted to write this now, six months into the job search to make two primary points with, I hope, a greater degree of authority: 1) the ideal end is not guaranteed, but also 2) hope in the midst of despair is possible.
I have not yet found my next opportunity. I have not yet re-secured steady income for my family. And as of right now, I have no guarantee that the pending opportunities will manifest and right our family ship. And even though this is not due to a lack of effort, I still find myself sputtering and struggling for air in the incessant waves of this hardship. The happy ending has not happened, and it may not, at least not to the degree or in the manner that I want. But, absurd as it may sound, that is ok. Not because I’m embracing my metamodern self. Not because the prospect of culturally and physically moving my family is not a deeply troubling one. Rather, because the end of this particular chapter is not solely defined by my material goals, nor is it contingent solely on my ability.
Hope in the midst of despair is possible. As Saint John of the Cross wrote in the 16th century, “the greater is the darkness wherein the soul journeys and the more completely it is voided of its natural operations, the greater is its security.” In other words, as hardship culls the soul of vanity, greed, unhealthy ambition, and materialism, the closer we can be to God.
The soul’s “dark night” is actually a prerequisite to a certain dimension of God’s grace.
Divine comfort and guidance in periods of hardship not only calm anxiety about what the future will hold, they reorient the heart to what matters most: our standing before God. This reorientation has been an invaluable source of light in my own period of darkness. A rock to stand on and lift my chin a bit higher above the crashing water. This hardship has taught me humility in a way that my prior vocational ascension would never have allowed. Yet there remains a substantial tonnage of perspective, trust, and divine obedience that my struggle facilitates and that I have yet to fully embrace. So, regardless of how the chapter ends, my effort—imperfect as it has played out so far— must extend beyond my furious search for employment. I should strive to be fully suffused by the life-giving potential of my dark night and revel in the unique proximity to my divine Father that joblessness has forced.
Beautiful reflection on hope and despair in our age!
Loved this piece Luke; thank you for sharing.