Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Blind Belief...

Has it ever struck you that it is almost as if, if you believe something good, something right is going to happen, then it just shall? It is as if the thoughts, the slight smile and the burst or spark of joy within you can alter your fate, your destiny. That one moment of intense belief and hope can make things go the right way! Just hold onto this thought and let us see where it takes us...

It is this thought that comes across overwhelmingly from the Alchemist and from Jonathan Livingston Seagull and a host of other books from different genres. A lot has been written and said and all of it sounds interesting and inspiring. But it is hard to believe something like this truly till you have an experience that makes you discover it for yourself. As has been for me all my life, discovering things for myself, as if I were the first person to find them, makes it far easier for me to accept and believe. So the parents and other elders may have been trying to get me to accept a fact but I never can till I firmly believe it from the depths of my being.

Perhaps all this is part of being a human being...the fact that we need to experience, live through an event in order to believe...blind faith can be such a bore! Many might say that it is important to believe in the wisdom of elders and to learn so as to never make the same mistakes...otherwise mankind shall never progress. But what is the point of such faith if it means never really believing but taking things on trust...just because “someone wiser says so”! 

4 comments:

vinay said...

ya, true ! Things sink in more easily if you experience them..But, there are some things which have been told to you by your elders and which you had believed in as a small kid and now, have started doubting it. That may be because we don't have the reason behind that and our rational mind seeks explanations. But it's worth to continue doing them if they make somebody happy without bothering about extracting any joy from them. Somewhere down the line we see the sense (or the lack of it, if the case be) and then enjoy it even more :)

Anonymous said...

True...but borrowed wisdom has its advantages...there is really no point in repeating things categorized as 'mistakes' or 'DONOTs' once more to realize that it is a mistake after all.Similarly,when someone says 'do this it will make you feel good',the probability of the suggestion working out is pretty high.I guess personal experience helps in bringing out the beauty of age old wisdom and makes sure we pass it down with as much zeal as it was passed onto us.:)..just my thoughts...lovely post!

Avi said...

Well written can identify with most of it too :)
But dont you think blind belief is an adventure in itself. Like letting go of your supports and going into free fall. To not test something and sccept it just because you are told so. At times when I rationalise events and happenings around me, I also realise that the magic is lost. I could do with some magic all the time. Great writing

Suneel Madhekar said...

True. For us to accept something and believe in in, we need to be convinced about it. Some of us need some amount of reason to get convinced... Some of us need some trustworthy entity to tell us, to get convinced. The trustworthy entity might be a teacher, parent, elder, priest, a holy-book or anything else. All of us are blind-believers, in some measure or the other. I personally hold reason above faith wherever a comparison among the two is feasible. But human thought-process is such a complicated thing, that we can never hope to conclusively say one is always better than the other. It will always be one of those fuzzy things that make us human.