Pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth…

sloth noun 1 [ mass noun ] reluctance to work or make an effort; laziness: ORIGIN Old English: from slow + -th2. [We’ll ignore the three-toed sloth)

despair (Thesaurus) noun many parents feel pain and despair about their teenage children: hopelessness, desperation, distress, anguish, pain, unhappiness; dejection, depression, despondency, disconsolateness, gloom, melancholy, melancholia, misery, wretchedness; disheartenment, discouragement, resignedness, forlornness, defeatism, pessimism. ANTONYMS hope; joy.

PHRASES be the despair of my handwriting was the despair of my teachers: be the bane of, be the scourge of, be a burden on, be a trial to, be a thorn in the flesh/side of, be a bother to, be the ruin of, be the death of.

verb don't despair if you didn't win this time: lose hope, give up hope, abandon hope, give up, lose heart, be discouraged, be despondent, be demoralized, resign oneself, throw in the towel/sponge, quit, surrender; be pessimistic, look on the black side; archaic despond.

Unlike other sins, despair is by tradition the sole sin that cannot be forgiven; it is the conviction that one is damned absolutely, thus a repudiation of the Christian Saviour and a challenge to God's infinite capacity for forgiveness.

Okay, do you see my point here?

People are upset, to say the least, and now they’re facing the second wave of Covid19. it’s so hard to brace yourself for a worse onslaught than the one we have barely survived—at least we have survived so far, as the mortality rate keeps rising. But it’s no time to despair.

Without editorialiizing about this, I’ll just give you a few antonyms of despair to hang onto—and to practice.

Antonyms for despair; cheer, confidence, faith, joy, encouragement, hopefulness, peace, trust, happiness, comfort, joyfulness, pleasure, contentment, cheerfulness.

Antonyms for despair

· pleasure.

· peace.

· cheerfulness.

· confidence.

· faith.

· hopefulness.

· joyfulness.

· trust.

I rest my case.