I encountered Cioran on a Thursday night.

During that period, my calendar was packed like Tetris—every slot had a purpose, every gap was stuffed with a to-do item. Notion kanban boards neatly displayed ongoing projects, each card with deadlines, color-coded tags organizing everything. From the outside, I was a well-functioning system.

But the person inside that system hadn’t felt anything in a long time.

Not sadness. Sadness is at least a feeling. It was something more vague—like driving on the highway too long, eyes open but seeing nothing. You know you’re moving, but aren’t sure why you need to move.

Then I opened “On the Heights of Despair.”

Cold Water

Cioran’s words have no warmth, or rather, their temperature is sub-zero.

He doesn’t comfort you. Doesn’t encourage you. Doesn’t tell you tomorrow will be better. He doesn’t even tell you what to do. He simply describes, with almost cruel precision, those things you’ve been avoiding: life might truly be meaningless. Your busyness might just be a more sophisticated form of escape. All your plans and goals might just be filling a hole that can never be filled.

The first reaction to reading such things is anger. I thought: what’s wrong with this guy? The whole world is trying to live better, and you’re writing nihilistic nonsense?

But the next morning when I woke up, I found myself thinking about his words. Not “thinking”—pondering—that involuntary kind, like a stone sinking to the bottom of water.

Then I realized: I hadn’t had this kind of involuntary thinking in a long time. All my thinking had become purposeful—to solve problems, to plan next steps, to produce content. Cioran’s words impacted me because they triggered an ability I’d almost forgotten: thinking without purpose.

When Suffering Becomes a System Error

In our era, pain is treated like a bug.

Anxious? Go meditate. Depressed? Go exercise. Lost? Take classes. Insomnia? Improve sleep hygiene. Every negative state has a corresponding solution, like a troubleshooting manual: encounter problem A, execute step B, restore normal state C.

I was a faithful executor of this mindset. When entrepreneurship hit bottlenecks, I didn’t allow myself to be discouraged too long—quickly analyze causes, adjust strategies, start over. Team conflicts, I wouldn’t let emotions fester—quickly meet, clarify misunderstandings, establish rules. Even personal life’s low points were handled with the same approach: write three things I’m grateful for, do ten minutes of deep breathing, then continue with the to-do list.

Efficiency. Efficiency. Efficiency.

Cioran showed me this system’s blind spot: If all pain must be fixed, we lose the ability to understand pain.

This doesn’t mean pain is good, doesn’t encourage suffering. Rather, it means pain contains something you can’t see when rushing to fix it. Like taking film from a darkroom and hastily exposing it—the image is ruined. Some things need to develop slowly in darkness.

The Clarity of Despair

Cioran writes about despair not because he worships despair.

His logic is this: most people live within preset answers—life has meaning, effort brings rewards, good is rewarded with good, tomorrow will be better. These answers aren’t wrong, but they’re preset. You haven’t truly examined them. You just inherited them, then built your life on top.

And despair—truly facing the moment when “life might be meaningless”—tears down all these preset answers. You stand in ruins with nothing left.

Then what?

Then you begin to truly choose. Not choosing because “everyone does this,” not because “you should.” But after seeing clearly that everything might be meaningless, you still decide: this is how I want to live.

This choice after experiencing despair has a completely different quality from choices never having experienced despair. The former is conscious, the latter habitual.

My theological training gave me deep resonance with this point. Christian faith has a tradition called “the dark night of the soul”—the experience St. John of the Cross described: God seems completely absent, prayers go unanswered, faith becomes a desert. Many saints experienced such nights. And theological tradition tells us: the dark night isn’t faith’s failure, but faith’s deepening. Because only after all familiar supports disappear do you know what you truly believe.

Cioran isn’t Christian. But his description of “clarity at the heights of despair” has striking parallels with the dark night’s logic.

Inner Deficit in the Efficiency Age

Let me bring this discussion back to more everyday terms.

We live in an era of extremely developed external order. Technology can optimize your time, AI can automate your decisions, apps can quantify your health. Everything can be tracked, measured, improved.

But what about inner order?

Observing myself and surrounding entrepreneurs and managers, I found a common phenomenon: the more externally efficient, the more internally chaotic. The fuller the calendar, the more questions about “why do these things” get pushed to the bottom. The higher the productivity, the lower the sense of existence.

This is what I call “inner deficit.” Your external systems run well, but the person inside has accumulated massive debt—need for meaning, need for quiet, need to “just exist without doing anything.”

Cioran’s book continues being read in our efficiency-obsessed age because it hits this deficit. It provides no action plans for Notion. It simply says: your pain is real. Your emptiness isn’t a bug, it’s a signal.

Suffering as Developer

Suffering shows you what you’re truly attached to.

In good times, you feel independent, strong, capable of handling anything. But that might only be because nothing has truly been taken away yet.

During my entrepreneurial journey, I experienced several painful failures. Once when nearly giving up, I discovered my anxiety wasn’t from “the company might fail” but from “if I’m not a successful entrepreneur, who am I?”

This question stopped me. Because it revealed something I didn’t want to admit: I had tied self-worth to business achievement. Not consciously tied, but unconsciously. And suffering—the pain of failure—was the only thing that could show me this rope.

Cioran would say: exactly. Not because pain is good, but because pain is real. It’s existence’s developer. Those things fuzzy in good times—what you truly fear, what you truly depend on, where your values actually stand—only become clear in pain’s chemical reaction.

In “Faith Gives You No Immunity,” I discussed similar experiences: faith doesn’t exempt you from suffering, but helps you not lose direction within suffering. Cioran trusts no religion, but his observations of suffering overlap with theology’s understanding of suffering—both refuse to reduce suffering to a problem requiring elimination.

Courage to Stay in Low Points

Many ask: how to emerge from low points?

Cioran might counter-ask: why the rush to get out?

This isn’t encouraging wallowing. Rather, it’s saying: low points have their own things to tell you. If you rush to escape, fix, return to “normal state,” you might miss scenery only visible in valleys.

I later developed a habit: during low points, giving myself “no rush to fix” time. Maybe an afternoon, maybe a whole day. Not analyzing causes, not making plans, not seeking comfort from others. Just letting that feeling exist. Seeing how it wants to move.

Sometimes it leaves on its own. Sometimes it brings out an unexpected thought. Sometimes it does nothing, just keeps me company for an afternoon. But even when nothing happens, that quietude itself has value. Because in an age when all blanks are filled, blankness itself is resistance.

Not Rushing to Light False Lamps

I wouldn’t recommend everyone read Cioran. His words are too dense, too heavy, too uncompromising. For some, it might harm rather than help.

But he taught me one thing: don’t rush to light false lamps in darkness.

What are false lamps? Things used to quickly eliminate uncomfortable feelings—inspirational quotes, positive energy slogans, empty assurances that “everything will be fine.” These aren’t completely useless, but they often don’t illuminate darkness—they make you pretend darkness doesn’t exist.

True light comes after staying in darkness long enough for your eyes to adapt and begin seeing faint outlines. Those outlines might be your real desires, your suppressed questions, choices you’ve been avoiding. They’re dark, unclear, but they’re real.

All external order design—technology, institutions, industries, civilization—ultimately builds upon human inner structure. If the interior is chaotic, the most perfect systems will collapse. If the interior is stable, even in environmental turbulence, you can stand.

Opening eyes at the heights of despair isn’t to remain there. It’s to walk more steadily and see more clearly when descending. Because you already know what darkness looks like. It’s not as terrifying as you imagined.