What I Believe In

Belief is a big word, a sad word, and a bright word. To believe is to love and trust and hope and dream and all those words that provide the inspiration to the human psyche but are so terrifying and so potentially damning. Each and every person that has ever lived, is living, or will live has a belief in at least one thing that marks them to the core and makes them the individual that they are. It provides a common ground that can never be taken away and my beliefs, as strange and sometimes personal as they are, have given me the strength to act as I have and will in the future.

I believe in me. The statement that you are your worst critic is an accurate one. Living inside your own head can sometimes be the scariest thing because you think things you don’t want anyone else to ever know, and feel things of which you are ashamed and which you want to keep secret or hidden. You know all of it and you can’t escape from it. So if you’re your own worst critic, then equilibrium dictates that you must therefore be your biggest cheerleader.

That is not the precise reason why I believe in myself. I’ll be the first to admit that I have a strong support group but the actuality of the universe is that we are alone, locked inside our heads and our hearts. I believe in myself because if I don’t, who will? Why would anyone want to believe in someone who doesn’t even believe in themselves? But beyond that, I would want to believe in myself because I know my flaws. I know that I have a quick temper, that I’m stubborn, that I have a tendency to shut down emotionally, that I can get far too easily worked up, that I have an addictive personality, that I don’t forgive readily, that I’m abrasive and somewhat controlling and far too independent for my own good. I know that. But what I also see is the good. I know that I’m incredibly loyal, that I can hold it together in a crisis, that I love my family and would do anything for them, that I love animals, that I have more than my fair share of determination, that I’m both smart and clever,  and that I have an amazing imagination. If I didn’t believe in myself, there would be some problems with the universe. I wouldn’t be me without the flaws and so I embrace them because they feed my virtues.

And I feel like this acceptance in the world is a peculiar thing. This world tries to tell you how to act, how to think, and how to be to try to create one big organism. It also seems to be trying to teach us that we must be perfect and without flaws, uniformly so. I don’t agree with that. Conformity has its uses but not all of the time. Every single person who has gone down in history for creating something or for discovering something or changing something has done it against the grain of society. That’s why I believe in individuality. We are each an island on the planet. Each island is different. Environmental conditions may be similar but each island is in its own little section of space. It’s useless to try to conform and those who do try are delusional because they will never be able to perfectly match another person. Leo Tolstoy wrote, in Anna Karenina, that “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content”. And that’s true. You will never be satisfied with who you are, with what you are, and with what you’ve already done. There will always be something you can improve on. The same thing goes for looking for perfection in other people. Perfection also means a lack of being human. Humanity is full of weird, little quirks and flaws that tend to spread across the species as a whole.

Being yourself as an individual is one step closer to that “perfection”. In Life, the Truth, and Being Free, Steve Maraboli takes the comparison that we are all unique, little snowflakes to a different level. Each snowflake, while they’re made of the same substances and are going to the same place, driven by a universal force, has its own unique shape that is best suited for its own individual journey. We cross paths with others, we bump into them sometimes, and that changes us. “But at all times we too are 100% perfectly imperfect.”

There’s another quote from a C. Joybell C. that I find to be perfectly accurate that sums up what I think about perfection. “For everything in this journey of life we are on, there is a right wing and a left wing: for the wing of love there is anger; for the wing of destiny there is fear; for the wing of pain there is healing; for the wing of hurt there is forgiveness; for the wing of pride there is humility; for the wing of giving there is taking; for the wing of tears there is joy; for the wing of rejection there is acceptance; for the wing of judgment there is grace; for the wing of honor there is shame; for the wing of letting go there is the wing of keeping. We can only fly with two wings and two wings can only stay in the air if there is a balance. Two beautiful wings is perfection. There is a generation of people who idealize perfection as the existence of only one of these wings every time. But I see that a bird with one wing is imperfect. An angel with one wing is imperfect. A butterfly with one wing is dead. So this generation of people strive to always cut off the other wing in the hopes of embodying their ideal of perfection, and in doing so, have created a crippled race.” It’s long, but I cannot paraphrase or summarize it without cutting out the point that perfection is imperfect and only with imperfection can we reach some semblance of perfect for ourselves, which gives us individuality in a world that is trying to forge us into the shape it thinks we should be, rather than the shape that is best suited for each of us.

Perhaps for the creative types, dreams hold more weight than they should. But without dreams, there would be no change. I believe in not just dreams in general but in having a dream. People tell me I need to keep my feet on the ground. But, they don't realize that I'm not meant to stay on the ground. I am meant to fly and born to fly. Chain me down, break my wings, I don't care. I will find a way to fly. I was born a wild angel, a fallen being, but with the possibility for exaltation as sure as the fire of my wings. No more will I be told what is possible for me and what's not. I refuse to be put in a cage, unless it is one of my own making. My decisions are my own and while I may get advice, I may not always act on it. There needs to be an element of recklessness to decisions, a leap of faith into your dreams. Sometimes, you sink, but when you fly, there is nothing that cannot be accomplished.

There is nothing more debilitating than fear. It cripples our wings and turns our fins to stone. We become paralyzed and begin to fall until we somehow find the strength to halt our plunge. And in that moment, between falling and flying, we realize more about ourselves than we ever could in either state. We realize that what we have within us can be accessed no matter what. It's just our job find it. Fear is the other side of dreams and it tempers the dreaming to keep it from becoming a delusion. There must always be balance but dreaming gives us something to strive for and something to use to escape the world when it seems to become too much. I believe in dreams and in having them because that’s a human trait. Because we create in our dreams a world of our own making and acting on those dreams changes the world for us and sometimes for other people as well. And we should embrace our humanity.

Standing as I am at the precipice of the beginning of the rest of my life, I find myself caught between this leap of faith and doing what I should. The problem is that what I should do isn’t what I want anymore and it’s in direct conflict with my dreams. This is the place that catches so many teenagers leaving high school. They set off in the beginning to do what they want, what they dream of doing, but fear catches them and drags them back down to earth, and they find themselves leading unfulfilling lives full of regret for those lost dreams. I’ve never wanted that for myself. I’ve always been more of a dreamer than I sometimes would have liked. But I don’t want to do something that I don’t love. That’s part of why I’ve handled IB so well. I love learning and I always have. Sure, my own dreams are a little crazy and more than a little impractical and there are a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t follow them, but if I don’t, then I will always be left with the question “What if?” That regret is the precise reason why I will always support another’s dream, including my own. Life shouldn’t be lived in regret and dreams shouldn’t be sacrificed because with dreaming, the most amazing things mankind can produce are born.

Then we come to change. Change is a little tricky. The consequences are what make it so devilish and angelic at the same time. As with nearly everything else, change is both good and bad but it’s the direct results that come from this change that tells us whether or not this change is good. As far as I’m concerned, change is good as long as it preserves strong individuality and promotes dreaming, and that’s pretty much all I care about. But I believe in change for the same reasons that I believe in individualism and dreams. It’s human and humanity, even the dredges of it, should be embraced. Change, right or wrong, is part of the human experience and it can give us the room to explore our individuality or our dreams. So I believe in the necessity of change despite the tendency towards comfort zones.

In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky writes, “Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.” The current that is time and life sweeps on with or without our consent. Swimming with the current doesn’t mean that this is good just as simply floating and watching the change happen is bad. There is uncertainty in change, certainly, but uncertainty breaks bonds around our minds and hearts and allows for expansion. “Uncertainty is where things happen. It is where the opportunities — for success, for happiness, for really living — are waiting.” This quote from Martha Nussbaum shows why I believe in change, for better or for worse and in sickness or in health. We need this uncertainty if we are to have dreams and be individualistic and thus have change.

I believe in standing for rights and defending them. That does not mean to attack another’s belief, which is unfortunately what it has come to mean recently. In this case, and in a rare shift from my usual opinion about it, a good offense is not a good defense. There is no need to attack someone else to protect your beliefs or rights. But it’s not just your own that you should defend. If someone can’t defend themselves, then it is the duty of others to defend them.

Beliefs are not the end all, be all. They are not a crutch or means to force opinions on anyone else. They are meant to be cradled and nurtured and cared for and they’re personal. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be shared quietly and carefully. My beliefs are mine and I fully expect others to find fault with them. But they’re mine and I won’t change them because of public opinion.