Today I sat on a swing in the park and swung away to my heart's content. And I suspect I enjoyed it way more than my two year old cousin. For those brief moments I had not the smallest worry. The burdens of life gave way to a lightness I have not felt in years. I stopped. I breathed. I turned my face up to the breeze. Back and forth, back and forth. Life is full of similar oscillations. Secure to stranded, elated to morose, confident to terrified. There is never enough time to categorize life as good or bad amidst this constant interplay of ravaging extremes. But today, in these rare moments of stillness I wondered what is it that makes one brave the downs and seek the ups of life.
What makes one pray to an unknown God? What makes one read astrology? What makes one search for the elusive silver lining to every cloud? It could be need. It could be discontent. Or even greed. I like to think it is faith.
It's funny how faith works. Oftentimes it is difficult for the rational mind to grasp faith as a concept. For it can seem rather blind, baseless and unscientific. The rational mind understands effort and result and expects them to be proportional to each other. It cannot settle for an aggregate but non-chronological reciprocity between effort and result. Neither can it understand belief without proof, or patience without progress. Rational as I claim to be, I believe effort and faith feed into each other. Faith induces effort even when the fruit is not in sight or within reach. Unrelenting hard work in turn serves to augment the very faith that one is constantly inching towards the fruit.
In principle, one could have faith in anything- in oneself, in instinct, in justice, in the ultimate reign of goodness, in the immutable laws of nature, in Time, in God. I think it is something, maybe the only thing, that protects our irrevocable right to dream, our sometimes irrational optimism, and our unjustifiable claim to lofty goals and ideals. It is what keeps the innocence in us from escaping.
Back and forth, back and forth, life will go on. I know. But right now, there is a breeze in my hair. The grass is young and green. The moon is high and blue. The world is picturesque. The idealist lives on...
