Why We Believe
I think the reason why I believe is probably at the root of it the reason why we all believe in something. It is just such a miracle that anything exists and that I get to be a part of it. What are the chances out of the entire universe that I would be born at all, let alone born to the time and place and parents that I was? And what are the chances that I would be healthy and have the benefit of an education and that I would find the courage to live the life I want to and continue to have that courage into my sixties and I hope my seventies and eighties and nineties.
I can understand why it would be hard to continue to believe in the magic of life if one were ill or abused or confined or physically handicapped, yet people do continue to hold onto every scrap of existence. Life is such an incredible thing and to not appreciate it when we have every reason to appreciate it is such a waste.
There is so much cruelty and oppression and greed and poverty and disease and sadness in this world. Yes, we do what we can to fight it, but an additional and very important way to fight it is to be as productive and happy as we can be. Polarity demands its opposite and the world changes for the good by holding onto as much of the positive as we can. Living it. Promoting it in others. Helping each other. Good mothers and fathers do this every minute of every day and those of use who don’t have children can do it by trying to be surrogates for those children and those adults who need our care and help. This help may be given in an organized fashion by volunteering and donating or by the way we treat others in our every day life. We can be observant. We can be helpful. We can be as kind to each other as possible, given that we are human and feel anger, fatigue, frustration and hopelessness.
At the end of the day–even the worst day–we get to choose whether to give up or to continue to believe, and even if the choice is to give up, we have one more chance. I think dreams are messages and reminders we send to ourselves–little boosts encouraging us to listen to that deep part of ourselves that will always believe, even if it has to go on without the support of our conscious minds. It is the part we get to when we write or draw or paint or dance or sing or play an instrument. That is the importance of the arts. They connect us to our beliefs.
So when I find myself floundering, whatever time of the day or night, my easiest way to find a reason to keep going is to do what I’m doing now. To write. Or to make art out of whatever I find around me. For in this aspect, art imitates life. It is simply looking around for what we can find around us and making the best of it. Someone once says “It is the job of the artist to take the detritus that the world creates and to hand it back to the world as art.” That is exactly what I do in my “found art” collages. And this, at the end of the day, is enough for me to believe in.
Click on any one of the images to enlarge and enter gallery. Can you find “Lord Love a Duck,” a pheasant, frigate birds, the ballerina, puffin, a seal, a sea bird, wild pig or “Found Heart?” I just realized I left out my favorite, so I’m going to add it below.
The Prompt: In Reason to Believe, Bruce Springsteen sings, “At the end of every hard-earned day / people find some reason to believe.” What’s your reason to believe?
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
Great post. Life is magic and modern science affirms this.
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Thanks Robert. I love your statement. Are you referring to quantum physics?
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Yes…:)
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I am fortunate to live in a time and a place of abundance. When bad things happen – and they do to everyone – I have faith I will land on my feet. That belief gives me joy most days, even when the days are difficult.
Sometimes I lose a little of my faith. When my marriage ended. When my business struggles. But somehow the see of that faith begins to grow again and it eventually, often quickly, breaks the ground and blooms with joy.
I don’t know why I believe, but I suspect it is because I have relied so much on abundance in the past, I can’t imagine it not being there in the future.
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Beautifully written. Life is a gift and we need to unwrap it, use it to its fullest and cherish it each day.
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Agree, agree, agree, Miriam.
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More power to your creative view of the world, and all your makings.
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Judy, thank you for your fabulous post. Made me think, ‘Why I Believe’.
I’m afraid if I didn’t believe in this cray world we live in, I’d lose all hope. How far would we get in life if we didn’t have that external flame of hope? Without this, there wouldn’t be anything worth getting out of bed in the morning for. Would there?
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Nope, there wouldn’t be… That hope is what fuels us.
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So what do “we” believe in? And what does fictionalkevin have faith in”? Life? This life? Which comes to an end. Faith never endd!
I know a person of your tremendous depth realizes this life is not the end. That there is more after this life than we can comprehend. I am very fortunate because I was dead, literally. ICU, 5 days with 5 quarts of blood and my heart shocked twice to restore it’s beat and this happened 2 years before my Stage 4 Cancer survival.
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Ok I must have hit send in error! What’s fascinating about my brush with death is I had no idea what was going on. I was not in my body, I felt no pain, was unaware of not breathing or electrodes on my chest. My poor ex-wife sat trough it all and the only memory I have is very vague, like a dream or dejavu and it was of the male nurse walking by my bed humming.
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Darn this Smart Phone! I am dying again, an Android death!
Instead of taking up valuable comment space. I assure you this life and the 1st death are meaningless compared to the next life and the 2nd death for the next life is eternal and the 2nd death decides your eternal home. Faith? In life? Faith in work? I have Faith and I know the AUTHOR of my faith. I knew HIM before this world was formed and I KNOW I will one day go HOME. I wake up each day grateful to be alive but I am most grateful I have nothing to fear in this world, not even death.
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Take as much comment room as you wish, TR…That’s what it is here for. I don’t really know what I believe will happen when I die. That is perhaps part of the reason I’m so determined to live life to the fullest here and now…And I’ve found part of the richness of life is not having to be always busy in a social sense. Every year I appreciate my alone time, more. When alone, yes I like to be busy but it is because there is so much I want to do–writing and art, mainly, and if there is a creator, certainly we bond with it when creating!
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Beautiful post.
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