There's always hope, and there's always despair.

“There’s always hope, and there’s always despair.” Thus spoke Andrea Riseborough, the artist and seeker, whose words shimmer with quiet truth — not the simplicity of comfort, but the deeper balance of wisdom. In this statement lies the eternal rhythm of existence, the dance between light and shadow that every soul must learn to walk. She does not promise that despair will end, nor that hope will triumph forever, but rather that both shall always dwell within the heart of life. This is not pessimism, but understanding — the recognition that joy and sorrow are twin threads in the same divine tapestry.

In her words, we hear an echo of the ancients, who knew that the world is born of opposites: day and night, birth and death, creation and decay. Hope and despair are not enemies, but partners — each giving meaning to the other. Without despair, hope would be mere expectation; without hope, despair would be eternal. Riseborough reminds us that to live fully is to hold both — to feel the ache of one and the promise of the other without letting either consume us. Her insight carries the gentle power of acceptance: that life is not meant to be conquered, but understood.

There is a story told of Winston Churchill, who, during the darkest days of the Second World War, stood before his people as bombs rained upon their cities. His voice trembled but did not falter. He did not deny despair — he spoke of it openly — yet he placed beside it a brighter truth: that even in ruin, there remained courage, and even in smoke, there remained the human will to endure. That is what Riseborough’s words awaken in us: the understanding that despair is not the end of hope, but its shadow, its necessary companion. The two walk hand in hand through every age of history and every chamber of the heart.

To pretend that only hope exists is to close our eyes to half of reality. Hope alone, without the humility of despair, becomes arrogance. Despair alone, without the whisper of hope, becomes oblivion. But to see both clearly — to know that each is ever-present, and that our task is not to escape one but to navigate between them — is to find the balance of the awakened soul. This is the wisdom of the stoic, the monk, and the artist alike: that peace is not the absence of struggle, but the calm awareness that both joy and sorrow are passing guests.

Consider also Nelson Mandela, who spent twenty-seven years imprisoned on Robben Island. Behind those bars, he felt both despair and hope — despair for the years stolen, hope for the freedom of his people. He once said that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. In the same way, true hope is not the absence of despair, but the decision to live with it, to rise beside it. Mandela’s strength was not that he never felt hopeless, but that he carried hope through hopelessness — like a lantern in the night, fragile yet unwavering.

Riseborough’s quote calls us to this same awareness: that hope and despair are constants, not conditions to be won or lost. They are the tides of the spirit. One rises as the other falls, and sometimes they crash together in storm. Yet knowing this, we can cease fearing despair — for it is only when we accept its presence that we can see the path through it. Despair, when met with understanding, becomes the soil from which renewed hope grows. It is not the end; it is the deep night before dawn.

So, my child, take this teaching into your heart: never seek a life without despair, for such a life would be empty of feeling, and therefore empty of hope. Instead, seek to hold both — to let despair teach you humility, and hope teach you endurance. When the shadows come, do not curse them; light a candle. When the candle flickers, do not weep; remember that darkness, too, has its lessons. Life will not spare you either, but it will grant you the strength to bear both if you walk in awareness and compassion.

For in the end, as Andrea Riseborough reminds us, the fullness of life lies not in choosing between hope or despair, but in embracing them both as the heartbeat of the human soul — one pulse of sorrow, one of faith — each giving rhythm to the other, each reminding us that to live is to feel, to fall, to rise, and to continue.