No. 46 Despair

Facilitator______________
Date___________________

Group Session Plan from FUSN (developed by Bill Horne)

Chalice/Candle Lighting

Opening Words:

The last stage in the life cycle focuses on the conflict between integrity and
despair. Integrity is the acceptance of one’s one and only life cycle as something that had to be and that, by necessity, permitted of no substitutions: it thus means a new, a different love of one’s parents. Although aware of the relativity of all the various life styles that have given meaning to human striving, the possessor of integrity is ready to defend the dignity of his own life style against all physical and economic threats. For he knows that an individual life is the accidental coincidence of but one life cycle with but one segment of history; and for him all human integrity stands or falls with the one style of integrity of which he partakes

Paraphrase from Erik Erikson

Check-in/Sharing

Topic/Activity:
The lack or loss of integrity may be signified by fear of death: the one and only life cycle is not accepted as the ultimate life. Despair expresses the feeling that the time is now short, too short to attempt to start another life and to try out alternate roads to integrity. Disgust hides despair, if only in the form of a thousand little disgusts which do not add up to one big remorse.

If you are in this last cycle, how are you resolving this dilemma for your self? if you are approaching this stage in the life cycle (c. age 60 - 75), how do you anticipate you will deal with it? If you are not yet fifty-five, how have you seen your parents or friends who are at this stage resolve this conflict? How can we direct our lives so that integrity overcomes despair?

Select the topic and location for the next meeting

Check-out / Likes and Wishes

Closing Words:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot