I seem stuck in this belief that there will be something better further along. It was one of those incessant thing that followed me throughout my most doubt-filled times, when I questioned the nature of reality itself, I have always had this inexplicable feeling that something else is going on. Just this tiny little note of peace that seemed to fill in the gaps when I needed it the most. Now that life is feeling absolutely pressured, now that I begin again to question what the point is, I’m still stuck with that tiny little feeling that keeps me hoping despite all evidence and feeling that mounts against it. It’s odd, just this completely ridiculous belief that tomorrow will be better. No matter how many yesterdays that didn’t prove out, I still believe that tomorrow something greater, something better will come along.
This above all other things is the foundation for my belief, my faith, my spirituality; because I lost all else that had anything meaningful to say about this. Depression is such an odd little condition; insidiously comforting so that you believe all you truly need is yourself, even though you despise everything that you are on principle, still you persist quietly, hoping. When if falls upon you slowly, you can almost welcome it; the quiet between storms of genius or mad flights of imagination. Almost as though you expected it, even though you’ve forgotten what it was like every other time, and in the midst of it, you are convinced it’s never been like this before. Again, that hope, that delusion even, that this is as worse as it gets, and that something else is always better. A gentle confidant, it coos to you in deepening tones of despair, all the while slowly stroking it’s clawed finger along your chest, letting flow the life as though it were blood spilt upon the ground. If you’re lucky, you wish it were your blood; at least it would be something real.
Other times it comes on so fast you can feel your whole body begin to slow, and the skin tingle as though each muscle suddenly lost it’s vigor. Those are the worst time, because you were conscious of the process, you saw it glide across your heart and cool your blood to near silence. Where the world slowly fades from real in the quiet times, now it suddenly becomes a story; a fairy tale told by fools who still believe in rules of right and justice. Fools that continue in games of showmanship and love, fools that conjure happiness from potions of food and fun. These times are not gentle; they collapse atop you as a wave upon the sandbar, dragging you under but blurring your vision so that no way is out, there is only in. These times you fight, because you know better, you have only just left the way you wish things were; still fresh are the memories of the other time, the better time. These times you feel the loss, you mourn it with every labored breath.
And when everything is a joke, a stupid pun; when simply breathing is a questionable activity, then you are left only with your principles. You no loner trust the sensations so long regarded as real, the suggestions of life that you clung to with the fervor of fools too distracted to notice the gently peeling tide dragging them into oblivion. What is real? Because your body has stopped to function, it’s dead weight is carried only by your mind’s insistence that it above all else is still real, still exists. So you collapse inward until the things that support you fail, and you become a small lump at the center of swirling fantasy. You are not left with anything but that one, small belief; life is better than not life. Truly, it is the only belief worth having. And from that springs an eternal and unfailing hope. Something greater, something better.
Does it need an explanation? True beliefs may never. Once established by reason and fact, it is no longer a belief. That I call my belief God comes more from ease of use than something classic and codifiable. Should any theology speak to my soul, it would be Anselm. A God, the God, would be that which nothing greater can be conceived. Nothing is greater than a hope for life. I make rambling twists and turns through Jesus and Zen, whending my way home to a merry tune. These are pretense and locution; I know nothing more than hope, and of that I know very little indeed. I don’t believe in Camus, exactly; to die or to live is not the question. Even being and non-being go far beyond the issue. What drives us is the answer; is life worth the cost? Is there something greater, something better to be had that will cancel all the horrors that lurk among our days, preying upon our years? Negating life is an active decision, a rational decision; contemplating death is for mystics, but believing is the passage of all living things.
This little, annoying belief grows in intensity over time. It proves itself over and over again without evidence, and in the face of so much despair. It whittles away the will so that you must acquiesce for the sake of composure. It would be rude not to. The longer you believe it, the stronger it gets so that it despises any questioning, it loathes any attempt to reason with it. An indefatigable tyrant that lords its terror upon you even in the midst of pain and suffering. While the depression seeks to soothe you, to calm you; hope attacks you, rips at your chest and claws at your gizzard, poking flames of life into your hollow skin. You must move, for it will never cease, it will never tire; it will continue forward until death or destruction.
Thus, I believe in life. I believe that something greater, something better will come for me if I persist. I believe that whatever the cost, at least for now, life is worth it. I know things will probably worsen, that sickness and destitution linger about the edges of anyone’s existence. I know that tomorrow will most likely bring more bills and no jobs. I understand that no one will ring at nine in the morning and declare their undying belief in my abilities, offering me a posh job on the spot. Still I believe, I hope.
That I find peace in moments of surrender to the currents of impulses and allow them to wash over me is perhaps a way of centering, a way of achieving Zen. That I flow with the world, allowing it to guide me as best I am able, feeling what it wills and not directing whenever possible, is perhaps a way of achieving Satori. And perhaps, because I bless others whenever the mood strikes me, and seek the way from what I know of Jesus as man, just maybe, that’s a way to heaven. But such a thing is more dangerous than helpful. The moment I am sure that it is beyond this life that is something greater, something better; I will no longer believe, I will no longer hope. I would know, and by knowing, end.
Non-resistance, total acceptance, blessing; it is all I know. Everything else is conjecture built upon wishful thinking. There is a hope, and I am not its master. Today, I believe that something greater, something better is coming tomorrow.