We invest in the people we love and the causes we care about, but people and projects may fail us. At the extreme, despair is an ordeal: physical suffering can compress attention within a present that has become unbearable, and psychological suffering may prevent a person from seeing any way forward. Although some people assert that everything will be alright, the reality of grief, anxiety, and exhaustion cannot be brushed away. Frustrated hopes are painful to maintain, so we are sometimes brought to abandon them.