Tag: belief

Leaving and Staying

Posted in essayTagged , , , 1 Comment

I have great respect for personal experience and where that takes people.

Almost two decades ago, when I started college and I was barely an adult, I thought that I wanted to stay a republican and not become a democrat. I was worried that the influences at college might sway my political views. But my opinions and political views changed, for lots of reasons. I went to political meetings and found myself frustrated with the attitudes I found there. I cared more about compassion towards others, and listening more than shouting. I left. I am very glad that I did not stick with my naïve18-year-old views.

Sometimes we leave. Sometimes we stay.

Commitment is often really helpful: it helps us get through the hard moments. When we commit fully to a goal or value, that commitment can help get us through some tough decisions. I once committed not to eat desserts for a month, and that commitment led to some health benefits and a greater sense of self-mastery. We might commit to not check social media, or to get out of comfort zone, or go to bed early. We can also commit to values, like honesty, truth, and love. These are good commitments.

But commitment can be harmful too if it’s not fully informed or is not adaptable to needed change. I don’t want to commit to some sort of dogma that I later learn is flawed and problematic. And because there is lot I don’t know, I need to leave myself open for change.

When I started graduate school, I was again worried that school would change my beliefs. I wanted to commit to where I was at right then, to be able to stay in the exact same beliefs that I had. But that sort of commitment felt wrong to me, and I realized that I needed to have an open mind and let me experience change me. There is so much I don’t understand; so much I don’t know yet.

I am religious person, and my faith is important to me, but it’s changed and evolved a lot over my lifetime. I was a good girl when I was young, and I didn’t have many questions. I didn’t rebel, and I didn’t swear, and I always did what I should. But now I do have a lot of questions, and I feel more rebellious and sometimes I push the boundaries. It’s not a big change, but it’s there.

Somedays I felt like I was on the precipice of leaving or staying–I wasn’t quite sure what was next. I know of really good people who have made radical changes in their beliefs and their religion. Most of it is intensely personal and can be painful as well. When our identities shift and change, we can feel untethered, uncertain, unknown to ourselves.

But there was one day when I realized that I was no longer on that precipice anymore. That I was staying. Staying for now and maybe staying for forever. But I don’t know where the future will bring. I will keep changing throughout my life.

Knowledge and belief and commitment are an experience that is not always linear. Sometimes we leave and then come back. Sometimes we stay when we want to leave. Sometimes we leave and feel relief. Sometimes we stay and find peace. Sometimes we go through a lifetime of all of that in various areas of our life.

It’s okay to leave, if that is where your journey is taking you. It is also okay to stay.

Most of all, it is good to let your journey be your journey. And in that process, we also do not judge other people for where they are at. We can realize that we’re all just trying the best that we can.

Uncertainty and Belief

Posted in essay, philosophyTagged , , , , 1 Comment

We don’t know as much as we think we do. We are often mistaken and wrong and we need to rethink some of our beliefs a lot.

I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about uncertainty and correcting beliefs. But I also have been reading and thinking about commitment too. Sometimes we want to commit to beliefs, and hold to those beliefs, even when other people say we’re wrong.

I think it’s a miserable existence to only believe in what is supported with a proper meta-analysis and scientific consensus. Science can be great. But science is not the most important way we gain belief.

I believe there is truth, truth that is not relative. But I truth cannot always be discovered through the scientific process. There are many ways to discover truth, and to hold on to truth.

We learn through living. We learn through relationships and connection with others. We learn with experience. We learn sometimes through faith and action and seeing what works out and what doesn’t.

I want to be open to new beliefs, to updating what I think is wrong. But I am also committed to certain beliefs–beliefs on how to be a good person, how to raise my family, and how to live my life. Those aren’t the sort of beliefs I want to rethink over and over again. I just want to hold on to them and keep trying to live up to them.

I pray every morning and every night, and my prayer is often that God can guide me and that I can hear Him in my life. There are moments when I feel something that cannot be adequately explained except to say it is divine, that it comes from a power outside of myself. That is what I am committed to. That is what I believe.

So I will be a skeptic, sometimes, and I will be a scientist, sometimes, and then most of all, I will be a mother and a wife and a daughter and a friend, and my commitment to the most important beliefs will guide me to become an even better version of myself.

Personal Experience vs. Reasoning

Posted in philosophyTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Pretend that you’re a young college student, and you go into a class about the universe. And you learn about how massive the universe is and how much space there is. You learn that you can never travel faster than the speed of life. Your professor very convincingly argues that aliens can’t exist–and even if they do exist, they would be too far away to ever hear from.

Now let’s say at home, you’ve taken up a radio hobby, but one day, you start getting weird interference and you end up intercepting very strange noises you can’t interpret. You start transmitting back on this frequency basic information–like how the weather is and what day it is and all of that. For quite a few years, you transmit back and forth on this frequency, and you start to understand the person on the other end, who gradually learns English and tells you that they are an alien.

Well, of course, aliens don’t exist, so this must be a prank. But the alien gives you instructions on how to conduct a few simply experiments that allows you to see amazing things that you can’t explain and goes beyond current scientific reasoning.

Reasonably, aliens can’t exist. And yet, your experience is starting to tell you something totally different. You’re talking to an alien. The alien is talking back to you. You’ve see amazing things that seem at the very least highly improbable.

What would you believe?

If you had to trust your own personal experience (the things that happened to you and the things that you witnessed) or a well-reasoned argument, which would you believe?

If you saw a blue tree, but then heard a really good argument that there can’t be blue trees, would you think that your experience was wrong, or would you take the person with the really good argument and try to show them the blue tree?

I often trust my own experiences more than I trust reasoning. Reasoning can often be based in incomplete information, and no matter who convincing an argument may seem, it is almost never perfect.

But sometimes my experiences are fallible too. Sometimes my senses deceive me. Sometimes I don’t remember right. I have to use my reasoning too to make sense out of my experience.

So they both have to come together. I want personal experience and reasoning. I can’t just learn about something–I want to experience it too. If I learn about a location, I want to go there. I want to meet people. I want to have conversations. I want to see and hear and feel what something is like. And when I experience something, I want to know the reasoning behind it.

Certainty is difficult to achieve, and when my experience and my reasoning don’t line up, I sometimes have to press forward and keep hoping that I will learn more in the future. I’ll figure out how I could talk to aliens, even though it seemed scientifically impossible.