Many times in life, we find that the answers to our greatest difficulties, whether physical or spiritual, lie right under our noses. We just didn’t see it. Chazal tell us: “Everyone is presumed to be blind, until Hashem opens their eyes.” In other words, people do not see things until Hashem opens the mind’s eye and graces a person with insight and understanding to save him from his troubles.

   This, explains R’ Yaakov Meir Shechter shlit’a, is what happened to Yishmael and Hagar. Soon after being sent away from Avraham’s house, Yishmael and Hagar became lost in the desert and ran out of water. They had actually come upon a well, but because they were already sentenced to death, they could not see it. Only when Hagar abandoned all other hope and threw herself completely upon Hashem’s compassion, that “Hashem heard the voice of the lad, where he was ... and Hashem opened her eyes, and she beheld a well of water.” Hashem did not create a new well, He simply opened her eyes. He lifted the concealment, and the point that never broke was revealed. Now that she saw the well, she was able to give her child to drink and the boy lived. “And Hashem was with the lad, and he grew.”

   In Likutei Moharan (11-78), R’ Nachman M’Breslov zt"l makes a powerful statement: “There is no despair in the world at all!” R’ Nachman looked to the very root of creation, from beginning to end, and saw that despair simply does not exist. Hashem created His world so that nothing is ever completely lost. Everything can achieve its final tikkun, its ultimate restoration. Despair only comes because the spark of life is hidden within the shattered vessels. Despair is only an illusion, it does not exist at all!