Crisis

I’m reaching what is known in common terms as a crisis of faith. In hindsight, however, it probably isn’t a crisis per se, but a slow erosion of faith, which doesn’t amount to life-changing decisions. It is, in fact, so gradual and unobtrusive, even innocuous, that I didn’t notice it at first. Like cells shedding, hairs falling, the wind blowing the dust away, it was fading. And, faith to me was doctored fear. I was taught to fear consequences. It was all a question of dull causality. ‘If you don’t do this…’ On a level, it was worse than superstition. Respect for rituals was inculcated carefully, like lining a jar with bean sprouts, but I guess, not carefully enough. Because I associate a certain degree of carelessness with faith. It was an offhand, slight manner with which they caught hold of me and poured it into me. It was almost an accident.

But, faith, I believe, is supplanted with more faith, new faith. There can never be an absolute absence of faith, a gaping void. Faith is knowing, very instinctively, that there is an order to things, a pattern, a design. Faith is knowing that everything fits, or fits in a way we don’t know of. Faith is acknowledging incompetence. Faith is the only thing that justifies the things that go wrong.

Resisting the onslaught of synthetic faith is easy. But, trying to change the way it shapes people isn’t. When that constitutes the core of all arguments, the spring of all feeling and thought, it is maddening. Then I wonder whether it is really synthetic. And whether I’m being pretentious. Maybe I’m being pretentious by saying that I’m pretentious. But that is where logic bows out and faith troops in. The end of the conscious and the beginning of the subconscious. I can’t see through faith because I can’t see beyond my conscious reasoning. I can never know faith, because I can’t reach it. But that doesn’t stop me from believing.