Faith and Certainty

Do you know the word conviction?

Do you? Have you ever felt it?

That is the way I feel about faith. Faith for me is a conviction. Faith is the conviction I feel knowing that everything at the end will be fine. Faith gives me the conviction that after every end there will be a beginning, and I will have the strength to continue. I don't want to present myself as a dreamer or a happy endings seeker, on the contrary I try to live my life to the best every moment, and not wait for results. (I am motivated more by impatience than anything else).

I have faith as much as confidence in myself. I know that whatever I confront in life, I will be at the end a new person, an evolved version of myself. We are all evolving in this life, and even when things seem to go backward, faith keeps me alive and kicking.

I am trying to explain what a strange feeling faith is for me. Let me explain this.

I believe that everything that happens to anyone of us in the world has a meaning, just as if there were a master plan, or a divine force acting upon our lives. Not in the sense that everything is already written and we are just performers of a play. No. More or less I believe that we get whatever we reeeeally need and deserve, whether or not we are aware of our needs. For this matter there is a second virtue (or human value) that shows us how alive we are: freedom of choice (freewill).

There is always a conflict between what we want/need and what others want/need, or between our expectations and our circumstances. There is no perfect plan and no exact calculation when all comes down to human nature. Here is where I start to worry, having the knowledge that the only certainty is that nothing is certain.

I will never know exactly how I became certain that nothing is certain. Perhaps it is my father's influence. He is Chinese and his way to assert everything is by saying: almost, perhaps, or maybe. I know it is because he translates his Chinese grammar into Spanish. Such translation and my time with my father (all my life) has taught me my father's philosophy. It shows my father's train of thought, a cult and respect for the uncertain. Nevertheless, I don't want to support my perception for the uncertain on my father's influence.

Perhaps I learned about uncertainty as a result of my life experiences. Knowing me, I hold high expectations, and reviewing my experiences at the end I found/learned/obtained whatever was missing in me, or needed to be taught, or get to/through me. My sense of faith showed me that in the end I got whatever I needed or deserved. However, most of my experiences are not in the way I expect them. Usually, destiny/God/Universe leads me through a mesh of circumstances, and these circumstances change every time I made a decision. My sense of faith tells me that I will learn all the lesson in life that I should learn, and I will live through any circumstance. The results and consequences may not be the ones expected, they could be even totally different, but in retrospect the outcome is usually the same.

My dilemma starts every time I have to confront something new or a new challenge. My sense of faith tells me that I will get through it, I will live. But my sense of certainty tells me that one way or other I will be tested, I will be pushed, or pulled, taken to full capacity. I should practice my reading-between-lines skills and my blinding-faith...life is this way: uncertain. It does not matter how confident I am in myself, my knowledge, and my capacities. It doesn't matter how confident I feel. I will always fear the uncertain. My sense of certainty is a mix of fear and respect, surprise and impatience. Roosevelt said that "we have nothing fear, but fear itself..."

*sigh* I guess I still need to learn more.

Willie Siu

Essays
What Am I Doing?	Faith and Certainty	Misery's Advice
Approval Sickness	Good Pride, Bad Pride	The Believer In Me
	Self

Elsewhere
Willie's Home Page		brucew.com Home Page

	P3P Privacy Policy