Believe

60: (October 2022)

Years ago “when I was growing up” (as if that’s ever over with), I felt like I knew what to expect from life and what it expected of me. Was that just the naiveté of youth, or was life really like that back then? There were fixed notions of right and wrong, or at least that’s what I learned and took as truth. There were people to look up to that we wrote essays about at school. I firmly believed that people in positions of authority had my back—had everyone’s back. We could believe in them, trust them. History has certainly demonstrated just how naive so many of my notions were.

Decades later, here we are. What do people believe in now, and who do we believe in? As a whole, society has become cynical, and who wouldn’t be in the face of corruption on many fronts and its consequent sense of disillusionment? But that’s not a state of mind that I want to dwell in. I don’t want to feel lost, without anchors to steady the chaotic collective atmosphere swirling about.

What’s the alternative in the face of the relative lack of societal institutions or heroes to look up to? I have a radical suggestion: let’s believe in each other. Let’s believe in each other’s goodness. Let’s believe that we can all work together and find solutions to what ails the world, one little bit at a time. Let’s bring our dreams and visions and hopes for the future down, down, down from the outer spheres and harness them within our own selves, and then let that radiate out to our partners and our children, our friends and neighbors and beyond.

We all want enough food on our tables and a place to call home. We want to share life with the people we fall in love with. We want our children to be educated and have opportunities to fulfill their dreams as adults. We want to be healthy, and when an illness befalls us, we want to be able to get decent and affordable medical care. We want to feel safe. We want a peaceful world. Let’s bring what we value deep within our selves, and then let our visions spread out from there, believing in our capacity to manifest them.

Let’s embrace our best impulses and infuse the world with their power. Let’s believe in each other. 

40: (October 2002)

I used to think people were solid, knowable entities. But growing older has given me a greater appreciation of what a lifelong challenge it is to “know thyself”; to attempt to truly know another now strikes me as a pipe dream. Life events have brought me to a breathtaking, heartbreaking realization that people are more changeable than I had ever imagined, and my worldview has been forever transformed.

It has been a great lesson to awaken to certain myths or illusions that had prevailed in my life. It has also been a lesson in the wisdom of living in the moment, without layering on expectations about the future. So much suffering exists in the world because we are under the illusion that we know what to expect in life, either from people or circumstances. A friend recently told me the joke, “If you want to see God laugh, tell Him your plans.” If we were conscious of the fact that security is not real, in that it can never be a certainty, we might suffer less when life takes a surprising turn.

I love the lyrics to a Peter Mayer song that queries, “What if to reach the highest place you had to fall?” Perhaps to be human is to be in free fall, gliding through space, learning from each low point, always in process, always on the journey. When we think we have landed on solid ground and have attained control, that is the illusion; life will often pull the rug out from under our feet to remind us of that.

So I try to surrender and live in the moment. And when each moment is looked at closely, I have discovered that they are generally good; there is always much to be grateful for in each conscious moment. But many times I am too preoccupied with what I do not have in my life to notice what I do have.

Although I frequently fail at being able to live by my own advice, I do strive to be grateful for the gifts contained within each moment and to let go of my often too-tight hold on life. There are no training wheels, there is no guardrail, and a parachute never existed, so life might as well be approached as the adventure it is. Take a deep breath and enjoy the fall!

60-40:

Disillusionment can take many forms. It’s painful to experience, each and every time. Maybe it’s just part of being human; bumping up against each other and our man-made institutions all too often brings disappointment in one form or another. Yet we’ve got to get up and get in the game again unless we want to live in total isolation and give up on mankind altogether.

I vote for starting again and again, believing in one person at a time, albeit knowing that people, including myself, will repeatedly fail. But we can all keep trying. After all, deep down we’re all worth believing in.

(Here’s the Peter Mayer song “Fall” — enjoy!)