Faithfully in-between...

‘I do not deny anything but I preserve the right to doubt everything’

I am a person who abides the above principle. Perhaps the main reason behind this is that the statement above denounces the value of absolute truth whilst it refuses to become an absolute truth itself. I am not a rationalist and so I need some kind of faith in a higher power, but so does everyone else. That is all clear to me. The question is – why do people retain their faith even though they go to great lengths trying to escape from it? In the end faith in itself adopts a different form and shape altogether and remains within us, never truly leaving us but simply progressing and regressing, sometimes violently alternating between one such form and another. Ultimately, we revolt against it but its clutch on our throats is inconceivably greater and more powerful than our means to liberate ourselves. But it is not this asphyxiating clutch that is the true issue here; the crux of the matter is to be found elsewhere, in this very process of progression and regression, this constant, seemingly perpetual flux that our concept of faith undergoes each day.
We, ultra-sensitive doubters, are mentally structured in such a way that our faith is extremely variable and often completely random to the point that sometimes we may abruptly experience a total shift in perspective even if it is for a fleeting moment. Our quintessential aim is to squeeze out the most of it so that our memory is kept fresh for reason to instigate the process of fermentation – our chief goal. But in our aim is to be found our pain, for in that very same process of fermentation, we end up in a state of emotional hypothermia – a feeling of internal stagnancy eventually transformed into bitterness and resentment.
Allow me to be more personal here. I am generally a reserved character, often shy though I do frequently experience bouts of spontaneous arrogance which I later end up regretting. I think I also lack will-power because in all the times I have tried to be someone other than my usual self, I have mostly failed though I have had some high points. I am perceived as shy and ‘charming’ by some people, and well, the rest are more or less indifferent. I absolutely loathe the word ‘charming’ when it is used to describe me for it implies meekness and general clumsiness – a shorter way of saying ‘good-natured’. To a latent egocentric like me, this is intolerable and rather pathetic because such adjectives are far too modest and unimpressive. A cuddly teddy-bear could be described as ‘charming’ but not a man. Call a highly-opinionated man ‘charming’ and you might well sense that his ostensibly grateful smile is, figuratively speaking, a worn-out curtain behind which an anarchical feeling of spite is concealed; there is the most effective rhetorical device to emasculate a man – to call him ‘charming’. And so I feel, to my utter embitterment, that on the outside I am perceived precisely in this manner. Of course I might be wrong for I am no mind-reader and I cannot know what other people are thinking but the overriding gist of it all is I think pretty clear.
Our problem as ultra-sensitive doubters is that in our hyperactive self-denigration, we base our faith on preconceptions. These preconceptions tend to distort our view of the universe as a whole and chisel directly into the realm of our instincts. We end up being judgemental in accordance with principles extracted from raw instinct and raw human instinct is never moderate; it always strives towards sensationalism and often succeeds in reaching the point of intuitive Jacobinist totalitarianism. In other words, it preaches chaos.

However, I am not here to discuss the inner-workings of vanity.

It is simply the case that when our desire is to convey to the outside world a sense of self-assertiveness and we come to fail and instead this self-assertiveness is mistaken for self-deprecation, this failure becomes the ingredient for future mental volatility.
I am not ‘charming’ and I do not want to be; but when I am perceived as such, well what choice am I left with but to continue pretending. In our daily lives, our moods oscillate according to circumstances and we try to give a false impression of ourselves to every individual person we come across. How are we to stay sane then? We can’t and you are wondering why we need faith...
It is not simply to keep us going and make us put up with a lot of shit. That’s not the case. Our faith is lost in the abyss of timelessness. There is not enough time goddamn it!

With this indomitable current of crap that society showers us with, we simply do not have time to stop believing...