Empty Living

Blind Faith

     Billions of people around the world practice some form of faith or another with unconditional blind worship. I could never place my trust in something that I have no way in proving true. 

     I come from a "religious" family, I say "religious" that way as my upbringing and family were far from pious. My parents "practice" Islam, and as is with most devout households, forced it onto me growing up. They would take me to mosques, have me participate in prayer, try to make me memorize the words, and so on. I reminisce how vividly I loathed having to systematically carry out these tiresome tasks which I frankly felt to be useless. Why did I feel that way? Perhaps it was because none of my prayers had ever been answered. I still endured that awful childhood, barely making it by physically, mentally, and emotionally; there was no God who saved me, I saved myself. Life felt like a living hell as I had no view of the heavens above, never feeling the warmth of the divine in my most neurotic and broken time.

     What I did feel was pain, agony, and abandonment. My parents themselves were only loosely ardent to their transcendent notions, and were perhaps only marginally happier than I. What did I see to enforce the thought that some unequivocal veneration would aid me in settling my woes? Nothing. My battles had no reinforcements, only a gun against a tank. I learned that hoping in some divine being, or really anyone or thing besides myself, only lead to me feeling even more hopeless and irredeemable. I grew to become independent above all else as I came to understand that only I could solve my problems because I am the one thing I truly know in and out enough to have that kind of faith in. Maybe it's a bit cold but soon I saw everything and everyone as unreliable, all I had was myself.

     My lack of piety carried over into my relationships as well, I've never had a person in my life that I could wholeheartedly trust and depend on, and that's more than a little sad. If I couldn't trust in my parents and Creator, then who else is there who I could possible have fidelity in? There have been times where I've been in limbo of whether I could have hope in some other being than myself but it seems that every time that happens, tragedy befalls. A curse of contradiction one could call it, whenever my heart has been filled with hope it is immediately flushed out and instead refilled with grief and agony. It makes fostering belief even more arduous and ambitious than before when all one has is disappointment and betrayal at every occasion where the thought even dares to come to mind. 

     Going in blind is nigh impossible when one has already seen what pains that kind of thinking can bring upon. Faith, trust, and dependancy all come with a certain level of expectation for what that will bring. Religious people often believe that who or what they worship will bring them prosperity and divine aid. People in strong relationships expect their partner to be there for them and offer them realization of whatever role or service they play. People like children trust their parents to raise them and see it that they not just survive, but live. All the while some people like me just can't place their hearts in the hands of anyone but themselves. I see the appeal, I really do, in fact, I wish I too could partake in such hopeful and optimistic thinking. But alas, that is not meant to be.

     With age, our eyes mellow, and as such we slowly grow blind. Not blind by a progressive state of dependance and assurance, but by the bleaching of all the hope that had once filled one's eyes in the fleeting fever dream that was childhood and youth.