“What revives people is desire and what kills them is despair; and despair is an obstacle for all kinds of perfection.” Said Nursi

People are sent to the world under equal conditions and with necessary equipment. They all need eyes and the sun in order to be able to see. 

There is no difference between a shepherd and a king for a virus of cold. It may make both of them ill.

If a man who is sent to the world with necessary equipment does not use the organ he has been given or if he uses it in a wrong way, he will suffer from it. Every device in a car is necessary; similarly, every organ and feeling in man is important. For instance, the feeling of fear is like the brake in a car. The dangers that await a car without breaks await reckless people, too. There is also an “ACCELERATOR” in cars. When you lift your foot from it, the car starts to slow down and it is bound to stop after a while. The accelerator of man is the feeling of HOPE.  Hope means to have the expectation that something good and useful will take place. It is the source of the feeling of confidence. Since the past, one of the three time periods, passed and the present is about to pass, we can have hopes only for the future. The farmer cannot know how much yield he will get from the seeds that he has sown; we cannot know whether the tree that we planted will yield any fruits or not because a misfortune or disaster might prevent it.  

Almost everybody, whether a farmer, student or mother, does whatever they do with hope, that is, “BY EXPECTING SOMETHING”. We do our tasks and duties with hope and proceed to our targets with hope. Hopelessness means the paralysis of the will. A trainer of a football team does not send the dead people into the pitch because he has no hope on the dead people. There is nothing that a dead person can do. There exists a passive state in a hopeless man like a dead man. It is interesting that said Nursi says, “It is an illness like cancer” for the feeling of hopelessness.

A wise man said to a person who said to him,” I lost everything in a fire”, “I thought you lost your hope. You can earn everything with hope but if you lose your hope, then you lose everything.” Even when we close our eyes, we continue our journey in a bright world through dreams or imagination; so, why should we leave ourselves to the darkness of despair?

Let us listen to what our All Compassionate Lord says,

- …never give up hope of Allah's Soothing Mercy: truly no one despairs of Allah's Soothing Mercy, except those who have no faith. (Yusuf, 87)

- When We give men a taste of Mercy, they exult thereat: and when some evil afflicts them because of what their (own) hands have sent forth, behold they are in despair. (ar-Rum, 36)

In those verses and some other verses, despair is regarded as one of the attributes of unbelievers and it is emphasized that despair must not be present in believers.

According to the thought of Said Nursi, when we face obstacles while walking toward our target, we should use the divine word, “Despair not of the Mercy of Allah” as a sword and cut off the head of despair. We should trust our Lord, who says, “I am near to the thought of My servant as he thinks about Me” in a sacred hadith, and we should not indict His mercy. We should think that there is something good in everything and remember the divine word, “My mercy extendeth to all things.” (al-Araf, 156)

THE SECURITY OF BELIEVERS (Hasbunallahu wa ni’mal wakil)

Allah is sufficient for us against all kinds of troubles and misfortunes that we suffer. He is such a nice friend and disposer of affairs. a person who says , “Hasbunallahu wa ni’mal wakil” (For us Allah sufficeth, and He is the best disposer of affairs) takes refuge in Allah and remembers the verse,  “…and it was due from us to aid those who believed”(ar-Rum, 47) and goes on without being hampered by obstacles even if the events have huge waves like mountains. He interprets the events favorably, sees the life from an optimistic point of view and relaxes by thinking, “A person who sees the good in things has good thoughts. And he who has good thoughts receives pleasure from life. "

IF YOU ARE HOPELESS, YOU ARE THE HOPE

As a matter of fact, what upsets us is not the happenings that we experience but the way we assess the happenings. The most important reason for this is the mistake in our point of view leads us to the swamp of despair. For instance, let us think of the event DEATH, which seems the most unlikable to man. A person who does not see death and beyond death as non-existence and thinks, “He who creates out of nothing will definitely create again”, who thinks of the pardoning and mercy of the Creator, who cleans his mistakes he made in the past through repentance, who prepares himself for the hereafter through worshipping and charity will look at death and beyond death (Gathering place, accounting) hopefully.  He enjoys life with the joy of the opportunity of being able to do what he has not been able to do. A person who looks at the world from a wrong point of view does not want to think about the end of his life. He wants to console himself through alcohol or entertainment; he does not account himself; he avoids accounting. He buries his head in sand just like an ostrich so that the hunter will not see it; but his large body is apparent. It is still a target for the hunter; if we bury our head in sand through alcohol and not thinking about death, death still sees us. Forgetting about death is like walking toward the grave backward. Although we turn our back to the grave and walk backward, we walk toward death like everybody else. If we are hopeless, we need to change our point of view, fulfill our responsibilities and think of death hopefully. Then, we will start to look at the grave that we will go to by smiling (WITH HOPE) not fearing…

Features like haste in reaching fruition, not drawing lessons from history, ignorance, not being honest and not working are among the reasons that make a person fall into despair.

Since despair originates from the devil, to talk hopelessly is like talking on behalf of the devil. The Prophet said, “If you see someone who says, ‘Everybody has been corrupted; there are no good men left’ know that he is the one that has been corrupted.” It is because everybody sees through their own glasses; if you wear red glasses, you will see everything red; however, only your glasses are red, not things.

DESPAIR IS AN OBSTACLE FOR ALL KINDS OF PERFECTION

The obstacle in the way of reaching every nice target is despair. What prevents people from doing something in science, art, trade and every field due to the obstacles in the way is despair. What invites depression is the occupation of the person by the state of despair. Hopeful people heal fast when they face and struggle against an illness but a hopeless person has difficulty in struggling against an illness; and his illness gets worse. It is significant that people say, “DO NOT LOSE HOPE” after a trouble in order to console the people who suffer…

Hopelessness is seen in people who do not fulfill their duties. For instance, those who prepare themselves for the winter by storing wood and coal and those who prepare themselves for the examinations by studying do not bear enmity against winter and examinations. Those who do what the present necessitates look at the future with hope, not with fear. Winter and examinations are the name of the questioning. To look at with hope is the first sign of putting the present to good use…

Our Lord, who does not leave the creatures in darkness of non-existence and who saves them from “three veils of darkness” (az-Zumar, 6), as it is stated by the verse and who does not leave us in the darkness of unbelief, will never consent us to remain in the darkness of despair. 

In a world where a leaf does not fall of without the permission of Allah, we must be aware that there is someone who sees and observes us when something happens to us and we must not fall into despair.

There are fire escapes in every building and there must be. Emergency exits give people hope; they are gates of hope in the emergency. Similarly, there are emergency exits in every trouble or difficulty that we face. However, if we do not know about the exits, we will be hopeless.

Do those who behave the same when they are safe and when they are in trouble fall into despair?

IF YOUR ROPE IS LONG, THE DEPTH OF THE WELL IS NOT IMPORTANT FOR YOU. Keep hope alive; you can cope with all of the difficulties. There is no gain without pain.

Since Allah says, “On no soul doth Allah place a burden greater than it can bear” (al-Baqara, 286), why do you lose hope?

Some groups know that when Muslims fall into despair, they will be finished; therefore, they always show the scenes that elicit hopelessness in the media.

Our Prophet (pbuh), who never fell into despair although he was alone in the Age of Ignorance, gave hope to Abu Bakr by saying “Have no Fear, for Allah is with us” while they were migrating to Madinah and when they took refuge in the cave.

Hazrat Yunus (pbuh) opened his hands and waited for a hope even when he was in the stomach of the fish, where no help seemed possible

When it was forbidden to read religious books and when it was forbidden to call adhan, Said Nursi said,

Be hopeful; the most sonorous and highest voice in the future will be the voice of Islam!

by ripping the darkness and gave us hope. How can we fall into despair though we know those examples?

Let us apply the ointment of hope on the wound of despair.

Wise people stated that it was necessary to avoid everything that makes man fall into despair.

If every disaster is a harbinger of happiness, glad tidings to Muslims who have faced disasters for a century! The wheel of time is turning in favor of Islam now. “Be hopeful; the most sonorous and highest voice in the future will be the voice of Islam.”

Mehmet Akif (famous Turkish poet) sees despair as death:

To see the future as dark and give up determination

is what I will call a despicable death.

Give up worry and sorrow if your will is alive!

Be a source of hope for everybody if you can!

In the end, we quote the original assessments of said Nursi about despair:

The spread of despair is the most grievous sickness which has entered the heart of the world of Islam; it is one of the most important factors that made the Europeans dominate Muslims. It also makes people think about their own interests and kills high ethics. (Tarihçe-i Hayat)

Said Nursi sees despair as a cause of death and he mentions despair as the first disease in his book, Mesnevi, where he lists the four great diseases. According to him,

What revives people is desire and what kills them is despair; and despair is an obstacle for all kinds of perfection.

With despair, man regards the indifference and despondence of others as an excuse for his own laziness and says ‘it is none of my business; everybody is terrible like me’, abandoning the courageousness of belief, and neglecting his Islamic duties.

Despair destroys happiness; happiness is improved by hope.