06 - Faith 1-1

I imagined having to talk myself down from the perspective of the one who loves me most, and only then did I understand the sense of desperation and futility that comes from attempting to tell someone that their world view is not true.

Inseparable and irreparable, the lenses with which we are born present to us broken fractals, allowing us intimations of the patterns of existence, though our stories and proclamations of truth in their most complete forms still only resemble the tattered fragments of ancient philosophers who wrote in languages long dead.

Of course! Of course I love you.

Then are my rooting beliefs of waning affection a reflection of the conscience I can only ever read on yellowed pages and incomplete thoughts, or are they a reflection of my own specific shade of suffering?

Trust established through the predictable patterns of the fractals we see, where even we fill in the missing parts with reasonable inference, is fundamentally faith. It is not faith without evidence, but it is not belief based on exhaustive proof.

But faith in anything outside of the self first demands faith in the self, for if we cannot trust on faith alone that what we perceive reflects some degree of truth, then every perception falls victim to nihilism and its inevitable end of endless misery.

Faith is investment -- any degree of gifting part of ourselves to the world is. I have faith that I will wake up tomorrow; faith that my parents will too. I have faith that our collective desire to avoid suffering will stay the hand of evil that every human has. I have faith that the one who has pledged her life to me will not revoke her pledge in the next day or century.

Yet I remain constantly aware that the state of existence is one of continual change and unpredictability. First I relinquished control of all things outside of myself -- then I relinquished all wishes to have such control.

What is left is faith.

Faith that when I exert control over the things I can in ways that are most beneficial to myself and others, that those things I have invested my being into will remain a positive force in my life and still allow me the graces of their love; for if I am given the opportunity to reflect upon my life at death, I will judge its worth by the balance of the weights of my self-integrity and regrets.