Montaigne isn't simply saying that self-knowledge prevents despair—he's arguing something more unsettling: that we squander ourselves through distraction and external pursuit, making us genuinely lose what we thought we possessed. A person chasing approval, status, or someone else's vision of success has already abandoned the only asset that was ever truly theirs. When someone loses a job they'd built their identity around, the devastation reveals they'd already misplaced themselves long before the pink slip arrived. The recovery, then, isn't about finding new employment—it's the slower, stranger work of remembering who they were underneath the title.