On the Group Psychotherapy mailing list, there has been an interesting discussion of hope and despair as we look at the fighting in the Middle East. Here is a modified version of an email that I sent to the list.

I hold desperately on to hope, not because I believe there ever will be peace in the Middle East, I simply do not know. Yet, for me holding onto that belief, that hope is what I must do to survive. My mind wanders to Viktor Frankl's 1946 book Man's Search for Meaning. Then, my mind wanders to A.M. Rosenthal's essay, "No News from Auschwitz"

Brzezinka, Poland—The most terrible thing of all, somehow, was that at Brzezinka the sun was bright and warm, the rows of graceful poplars were lovely to look upon, and on the grass near the gates children played.

It all seemed frighteningly wrong, as in a nightmare, that at Brzezinka the sun should ever shine or that there should be light and greenness and the sound of young laughter. It would be fitting if at Brzezinka the sun never shone and the grass withered, because this is a place of unutterable terror.
...
There is nothing new to report about Auschwitz. It was a sunny day and the trees were green and at the gates the children played.

From their, my mind wanders to W.H. Auden's great poem, Musee des Beaux Arts:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood

So those who despair that there will never be peace in the Middle East and people like me who desperately seek for ways to bring peace are parts of the same drama seeing two sides of the same horror. If I were a therapist, I feel I would need to embrace both parts to be able to reach the people that came to see me. I would have to hold the ambiguity that Miriam talks about. I might even have to channel a little bit of Joni Mitchell

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
Its life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all