The endless searching for metaphors of hope

THE LEGENDARY musician Chris Cornell committed suicide on May 17, aged 52. How difficult to understand, Rich Larson wrote. “He was a dad. He was a philanthropist. He was becoming an elder statesman of rock. He was a grown up. Cornell was ageing gracefully, even doing that thing where some guys get better looking as they get older.

“He got Soundgarden back together. His voice still had all the power and strength it had displayed in his youth.

“Much like the rest of us, the world had kicked his ass a couple times, and he survived.

“But now he’s gone.”

The cause? Depression.

“We talk about it as a demon or a monster. It’s a dark shadow … It surrounds us, isolates us, and quiets us.

“Depression likes to blame things,” Larson warned. “Depression and cynicism … Those two go hand-in-hand, along with their nasty little sister, anxiety. When the three of them get going, they just eat hope as quickly as it can be summoned.

That leaves despair and despair is exhausting …

“Depression makes you feel totally alone. You hit the breaking point, and then, like Chris Cornell, you die alone in the bathroom.”

At times, life in South Africa feels that way.

Is our country in the grips of a depression? It’s easy to believe so. Our historic imbalances are indeed as real as chemical imbalances in the human brain. Which devour our hope.

But flickers of hope sometimes slip through the defences.

Often as metaphors, always in deeply personal ways.

Like this: On Friday, as far east as our convention stretches – in eastern Australia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia – eyes were trained on the night sky.

In Cape Town, on the Sea Point promenade, many stared off into the darkness too. In search of the new moon.

It’s a profoundly meaningful time.

For while the fasts of Ramadaan will require strength and resilience, the countdown has begun for the next new moon, Shawwaal. A celebration awaits.

Another metaphor: The morning after the new moon was sighted, the skies above Cape Town rumbled. And then the rains came.

We heard big fat drops on a tin roof – a sound we’ve all but forgotten. The sound of hope.

The drought is still with us, there are tough times ahead. But the rains will come. Just as the new moon will return.

Maybe “the hyenas” circling this country will even be driven away too.

Our depression is chronic.

But in the words of another song, by Cornell’s countrymen, the band Journey: “Don’t stop believing.”