A leap of faith

This post is all about faith, trust and belief, some of the most conspired topics to talk about. I want to present to you readers a few questions that run through my mind every day, and perhaps through your heads as well.

When I wake up at 4:45 AM daily, one of the first things that come to my mind is this- Why am I here? What brought me here? What gave me this life? What gave me this thought to question my existence? Some of us go through the same questions, but differently- a rather more negative manner. Instead of asking yourself, "What the hell am I doing with life", ask yourself "What can I do with my life?" or even better- "What can I do with this life that uses my potential and helps others beyond just me?".

I wonder about these things daily- Why does this rock, out of the trillions of planets, support life? Like why? Or even better- how did that comet hit the Earth at the perfect time and give rise to life? I was watching this series called One Strange Rock, which is narrated by Will Smith and a couple of the most successful astronauts including the most popular of them- Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut who gave one of the best TED talks known to me so far (I kept my moustache for so long after watching his TED Talk). The thing with astronauts is, they have the best view from their office desk. I mean, imagine having a bad meeting with the crew and coming back to your desk to work again, but a tilt of your head by some 30 degrees leads you to the best thing in the universe- the Earth. Imagine having that as your office view. That's just completely priceless. I mean, if you're having that as your office view, then you're looking at the strangest, the most beautiful, the most special, the most vibrant, the most energetic, the most bizarre, the most diverse, the most integrated and the most pristine thing in this universe- the Earth. Anyways, back to the show One Strange Rock. I learnt that the comet which is thought to have brought life to this planet, had to strike the planet so precisely because if it had entered the Earth's gravitational field even a couple of seconds late, it would've drifted past the planet without hitting it. Now that's just some insane levels of precision that didn't involve any mathematics or mathematicians.

Now, let's set aside the thoughts express and turn to what this post is about. I wanted to talk about faith in this post because the Kingfisher reminds me of it. Something that I recently learnt about kingfishers is that they fish blind. Just before they hit the water, they close their eyes and bob their head just a split second before they hit the water to catch the fish accurately. So let's put that into perspective. You're diving at some 40-50 kph to catch fish whose depth underwater you've calculated by eye-balling it, without the use of the slightest bit of physics, or mathematics. And you only weigh about 400-500 grams. And you're a bird. Now that's some insane level of faith. Faith in something it doesn't understand. Like how does the kingfisher know to calculate the accurate depth of the fish while taking into account the effects of refraction? I mean, we humans have been using this effect of refraction only since a short while ago, but these birds have been doing it since forever. How? We, humans, are significantly more advanced than these birds, and this knowledge hasn't been programmed into our DNAs, but these birds have it in their DNA. How?

As dwellers of the concrete jungles that we have raised, we tend to disregard faith with scientific proof. There's a saying which some very famous person said (I don't remember who it was), "Faith is what the modern scientific mind will not understand".I think this speaks for itself. I mean, we're constantly blaming things going south without a sense of faith in the existence of something beyond ourselves. And that's not good.

You see, I'm not talking about just God, but science has shown that thoughts about God trigger certain parts of your brain which no other thoughts do. Only thoughts about God. Now, I've read this book called Sapiens by Yuval Noah (I keep mentioning this book but I am not getting paid or something for this), and this book has changed my perspective on religion and life. Because the book talks about the absolute truth, in that it doesn't say that God doesn't exist. God exists, but only in our mind. I will talk in detail about my perspective on religion and God in a later post, but for now, let's stick to the topic. How is it that as a life form that was no different from the apes, were we able to conjure up such a beautiful story that transcends limits, perfected to the pinnacle? How were we able to even arrive at this thought that all the things in the universe that we see around us should have been created by God? How is it that we were able to form a structure for our society, our culture and so on when we knew nothing?

Well, I think that the answer to all those questions lies in faith. You see, faith and effort complement each other. Life functions on a delicate balance between faith and effort. Tip the balance, and you'll witness disaster like today. Today we see faith being pushed to the very brink of being extinguished. I think effort is like a campfire while faith is like a candle flame. While a campfire would keep you warm, it's a candle flame that would calm your mind. You need both. You can neither stay warm with a candle flame nor can you pray with a campfire. I think we need to have faith (like the kingfisher) in the flow that life puts us in- go with the flow sometimes. Enjoy the moment. Live the obvious way. It's alright to not use your mind sometimes. Just have faith in the existence of some entity beyond us- be it God, or time, or nature, the thought that there could exist something beyond us itself pushes us to a state of complete humility and wonder. And that does a lot of good things to your mind. It makes life simpler. I might sound like a monk in this post, but trust me, faith moves mountains.

So the next time you enter a situation where you're not in complete control, just do your part- whatever small amount of work that you can do on your part, and leave the rest to time. When you put in your effort and stay true to yourself, everything else will fall into place. But you've got to put in your effort and then trust that the rest that's not in your control, will all fall into place. And I hope you readers will experience faith in the near future and witness how powerful faith and trust can be, and hopefully do something that benefits someone beyond just yourself.