A crisis of faith

It’s just a feeling.

I’ve heard this line on countless occasions, rattled off like a proven panacea by well-meaning people who have found it sufficient to comfort them in trying times. But since I appear to be of a different evolutionary track from the rest of you modern humans, why on earth would this simple little explanation satisfy my unceasing ruminations?    

I think I have always believed that there is something out there, bigger than all of this mess, a power beyond anything mere humans can conceive. Sure, the particulars of my working theory have changed over time, evolving with me through the seasons of my life, but even when it felt cold and indifferent, that something still existed.

I have tried to remain as open-minded as I can be about the proverbial big picture.

And I have wholeheartedly acknowledged that all too often we plod along for what feels like eternity before that watershed moment when it all finally makes sense, when those seemingly random pieces come together and the higher order is revealed. We laugh and shake our heads at how foolish we were for either not seeing it all along or for ever having doubted there was a grand plan in the first place. We never know how long it will take and we don’t usually have much control over the way it all goes down, yet we persist in our belief because it brings order to the chaos. We desperately need to have that light at the end of the tunnel to make the bitterness of life palatable. We have patience because we have faith and we have faith because it keeps us sane. 

Up until recently, my master theory went like this: If I am suffering, then…

     a)    there is something amiss and I need to make a change to alleviate the suffering.

     (or)

     b)   there is some value in the experience of suffering and I must feel it because the only way over it is through it.

I guess I’ve been a little bit Serenity Prayer and a little bit Hanged Man. In either scenario, I have reasoned, suicide would be pointless. He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it. There are no shortcuts in my theory, so whatever comes next will surely include the same unresolved issues (in whatever form they may present themselves) that I intended to leave behind when I ducked out on them in this life. There are seldom accidents. Never say never.

My body is matter. When I die, those elements that comprised the whole of me will be tossed back into the cauldron and stirred around with the rest of the soup to eventually reemerge, synthesized as other things. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, as it were. There is nothing individual or unique about my physical manifestation, parts is parts and I’m totally OK with that. However, if my feelings are nothing more than a function of this physical vessel, an equally inconsequential collection of raw materials with no meaning beyond my immediate perception, what’s left? How can I have a soul without love? How can this mysterious life force that animates me - this unexplained miracle that makes my heart beat out of passion as well as fear – not matter? Npi.   

So, if you’re going to reduce feelings to nothing more than a chemical released in the brain - minimize them as simple mechanical responses - then how does anything have any meaning whatsoever? If my guilt about harming others and my joy about helping others are just feelings, if my moral compass points to nowhere, why shouldn’t I rape and pillage my way through life? Take what I can when I can, kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out. I mean, if you take away the significance of feelings, the whole freaking structure of civilization falls apart. That reasoning has offended me every time I’ve heard it. So I silently scoffed and rejected on the inside, acquiescing and feigning relief on the outside as the easiest response. Just another reminder of how I’m impossibly different. Nothing to see here folks, move along. But now I’m beginning to wonder if this wasn’t contempt prior to investigation. It is only in the last day or so that I have honestly considered embracing utter nothingness as a valid and feasible possibility, and it kind of scares the living shit out of me.

But that’s exactly where I am now. I have doubts. What if there really is no man behind the curtain? What if the hokey pokey really is what it’s all about? We humans have a bad habit of making ourselves out to be far more essential than we actually are. Once upon a time we accepted as a natural and undeniable fact that we were the literal center of the universe. If we continue to chip away at that faulty notion of having some special significance, we will eventually cut ourselves right out of the picture. Maybe that’s for good reason. Maybe the truth really ends with that most logical and likely of conclusions. There’s nothing special whatsoever about any of this. Life’s a bitch and then you die.

If that’s the case, wtf am I even bothering for? I may as well just throw in the towel and call it a day. Why prolong pointless suffering? If I’m being completely honest, (when am I ever not lol), my checking out wouldn’t really leave that big of a void. Aside from my pets, my parents, and a few close friends, my absence wouldn’t leave that much of a ripple. I’m just not that important. I’ve never been much of a gambler. Experience has proven that my luck sucks. So why am I holding out for that unlikely long shot that maybe there’s a reason after all, when it makes so little sense under the microscope? That magical scenario of happily ever after is seeming less and less probable.    

I used to be the Queen of Swords personified. Negative, critical, cold, uncompromising, black or white, the glass is half empty and evaporating fast - it will undoubtedly be empty soon, just watch the level falling as we speak. It took a good long while for me to become aware of it and the ways it was holding me back, and I have worked long and hard to retrain my thinking and adopt a sunnier attitude. Fake it til you make it, like attracts like, smile for a change and you’ll automatically feel happier. I’ve made decent progress, but when the scale wobbles I still tend to lean in the wrong direction. Yesterday at work I observed this tendency leap out of me like a wolf shedding his sheep disguise and I looked over at DD to say how I hate that about myself. Maybe it’s a phase and I’ll come back around. Misery really sucks.