“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.”
-Rosalia de Castro

I wish I could say the not knowing inspires me, but the truth is most of the time it leaves me feeling one part crazy and another part terrified. To not know is our truest state, though we do whatever is necessary to fool ourselves or forget. Every truly wonderful thing that has ever happened to me has come from a space of not knowing. And every incidence of pure magic followed when I was convinced there was no way to know at all.

I’ve always thought of myself as someone of little faith, even though taking big risks and attempting impossible things is often my matter of course. I often think that if I had even a little bit of confidence in providence or divine intervention, I could take on my adventures with more peace in my heart or at least a dose of genuine joy. Instead, I jump, assuming at the end there will be a hard crash into concrete, but knowing there’s no life for me in avoiding the cliffs. Overcome with a resigned kind of terror, I take the dive, hoping for some miracle in the end, but willing to take the consequences if there’s not.

It’s only when I get close to bottom do I feel the weight of the little faith I do have. It’s only when sure and sudden disaster is in sight do I get a glimmer of hope that it will work out after all.

I don’t know why it works this way for me, but I’m starting to realize being willing to be terrified, being aware of not knowing and jumping anyway might be the definition of faith after all. That faith might be…

living in the world the way that you want it to be more than calculating the way the world is.

wanting to take the risk to create a new possibility, just in case something strange and unheard of can come into being simply because you dared to hope it could exist.

understanding you could be exposed as over-reaching or stupid or foolish and accepting that’s worth the chance of finding out you are not.

embracing a view of the world that welcomes people who dare and refuses to punish those who are willing to be confused and disoriented in pursuit of something tender, something honest, something true.

taking a gentle view of your longings and believing that everything unfolds, always and always, exactly as it should with all that yearning held close and not forgotten.

Of course, it’s also possible that these are the hallmarks of mental illness (fingers crossed) but I can think of few remarkable people on this earth who weren’t considered seriously flawed or slightly insane for choosing the path less traveled.

Tell me, inshuti wanjye (my dear friend), what faith looks like to you.