It might sound strange to locate the problem here, but in some of our most despairing moods, what really goes wrong is our power of imagination. We're not merely sad; it's that we can't imagine any better life than the agonized one we currently have. And what we really mean by imagination is the power to summon up alternatives. When we're down, we can't imagine finding another job or not minding what the gossip says about us. We can't imagine finding another partner or letting ourselves trust someone again. But on the other hand, with sufficient imagination, almost any problem can be worked around. If one door has closed, the imagination should in time be able to find another. There are other cities we can go to. There are completely new sorts of work we could try. There are places we can travel where no one knows who we are. There are lovers who will have a very different approach to intimacy than those we've known to date. The oceans are large and beautifully unconcerned with us. We are grown-ups, that is, people with choices. We are not the small children we once were who had to depend on their parents for everything and were imprisoned by narrow circumstances. We would be able to build ourselves a small hut on the edge of the desert. We could change our names. If we're feeling shy and defeated, we don't ever have to go out and see anyone again. We can live by ourselves and mind our own business. We can even go mad for a while and then recover. A lot of people do. We could throw ourselves into learning a new language or take a university degree in Sanskrit by correspondence course. We can find the love we need. We only require two friends or even just one to get by. Many people might be cruel, but a few are infinitely compassionate and kind, and we can go out and find them and not let them go. We don't have to stick by the script we thought we'd be following all our lives. We might have wanted to do so, but we are profoundly flexible creatures. When we arrived on the earth, our mental wiring was loose enough that we could have developed into excellent foragers in the Kalahari desert, Latin scholars in a university, or accountants in the logistics industry. Our biology is elastic. We may have lost a little of that primordial flexibility and latitude. It might no longer be so easy for us to pick up new languages or physical moves. But we remain eminently equipped to acquire new tricks. Other people – interesting, noble other people – have been here before us. There have been exiled Russian princes who learnt how to become tennis teachers, émigrés South Vietnamese army generals who started American kindergartens, divorcees who remarried, shamed executives who opened flourishing corner shops. In order to increase our chances of fulfillment, we need to feed and massage our imaginations. Whatever way we happen to be living, we should constantly force ourselves to picture different, more arduous but still bearable ways to be. We could think about how we might survive without any friends, without a reputation, without health, without any love, without much money. As part of their creative writing classes, adolescents should be asked to produce narratives titled, "If I lost everything and had to start up again, I might…" They could be asked to make a list of the 20 things that currently make life meaningful and then have to cross them all off and find ten more. Only a few of us will ever need to write short stories for a living. Very many of us will be called upon by fate to rewrite the stories of our lives. That is the true destiny and function of the imagination. When we are very sad, we should be provoked by the intellectual puzzle before us. How else might we get by, given how many possibilities have been closed to us? How could we fertilize the dung heap we are on? Our challenge is to learn to rebuild our futures intelligently and creatively on the ruins of our old lives. Our online shop has a range of books and gifts that address the most important and often neglected areas of life, such as finding a good enough partner and mastering the art of confidence. Click now to learn more.