Not Everyone Will Join Us On This Path

I like to think of having faith as interacting with the The Force in Star Wars. It’s pretty easy these days to get tangled up in The Dark Side. Between modern media, the mercilessness of capitalism, an excess of “critical thinking” and very little emphasis on resilience in public education, most of us are probably stomping around in life a little bit like Darth Vader, occasionally wishing we, too, could telepathically choke colleagues during a meeting when they disagree with us or light someone up with a light saber if they cross us on the school yard. Active faith in Good (or God) is actually really hard for biological, cultural, and physiological reasons. 

 So, while we may be doing a lot of individual work to focus on and have faith in God (or Good), that doesn’t mean that anyone around us will ever try to do the same. I will say, until I am blue in the face, that I think America has an unhealthy obsession with individualism and everyone seems to be doing a lot of suffering while pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps.

It has led to rampant isolation, disconnection, broken marriages, and busted children. We come from group-dependent primates, and our well being is based on group selection - i.e., the tribe will only do well if all members prioritize the tribe. The tribe falls apart if we only look out for ourselves. And, let’s be real, fallen apart it has.

We have a lot of individualism sewn into the therapeutic and spiritual mantras of our culture. Most people go to therapy alone to try and figure out how to tolerate an individualistic culture, a difficult work environment, a broken marriage. But the reality is the whole system they operate in could probably use a lot of therapy to improve everyone’s experience.

Organized religion might be the only infrastructure where individuals come together, pray together, and often provide support for faltering families, because the handbook of instructions on how to be decent people in their faith directs them to do so. It’s unfortunate that those same infrastructures have been used to alienate so many from the opportunity to have faith. 

I suppose that is why I am writing this blog, to serve as a catchall for those who have no faith, who may be struggling alone to find it (as I did for many, many years), and don’t know if they are even allowed to have it beyond the confines of religion. 

My point here in all of this is that, for better or worse, the spiritual path starts out an individual one. For the faithless, who have probably been operating in pretty faithless environments, it takes a lot of dedication, will power, hope, consistency, and practice to keep experimenting with faith when no one else around us has any or everyone is operating in a religious infrastructure we don’t believe in. We have to remain committed to the search and we have to watch others fall by the wayside as we gain faith and they do not. 

I actually have found it to be an extraordinarily painful experience to cultivate faith. I love my life. I believe in my future. I am dedicated to my faith. I am optimistic most of the time. But that doesn’t mean I can convince my faithless friends and family to join me. Heck, I can barely tolerate some of them now because of their rampant negativity. Faith comes with a lot of healing and growth, but it also forces us to look at the people around us in a whole new light, which isn’t always a flattering one. 

Faith gives us the strength to cut ties with the most toxic people in our lives in order to save ourselves. Sometimes, it even acts as a repellent to those who use and abuse others, because we insist on sticking up for ourselves, ask too many questions, or see through their facades. Faith, for a time, becomes a lonely endeavor, but it can also serve to help us find a new plane from which to operate and a new spiritual home with others we can trust, depend on, believe in, and share stability with. 

Not everyone will join us on this path. At least not to begin with. But, if we stay committed, perhaps we can have faith that our lives may some day be a beacon for others, should they choose to leave the Dark Side themselves and join us in the light. May the Force be with them.