A take on Belief

That evening I struck a conversation with my wife Sumi and Ma, about the concept of Belief. Being born and brought up in a very un-orthodox family, I have believed throughout my developing years that I don’t believe a lot of popular beliefs that my contemporary society offers. But that evening it was not about the individual beliefs, and the differences or lack of them, rather it was a dive at the beds of the very fundamental concept of Belief in order to search the pearls of reason behind why one should have beliefs and the consequences of the same.

There is absolutely no doubt, that beliefs enable a person to do a lot of things, which otherwise wouldn’t have been accomplished. However, just like all flies are not butterflies, some beliefs tend to shrink a person’s potential to do a mundane set of activities too. It is one of those rare inherent forces, which has the insurmountable power to make or break one’s aspirations, to influence the life of people around one. It is what makes us different from the lot. And since Beliefs can’t be shared, rather built, and lays down a unique path of glory or gloom for its holder, I was of the opinion that people who believe in anything, has to be reasonably selfish at some level.

Now that pulled Sumi and Ma to break free and disagree with me, which is the reason I love and stay with them! They were of the opinion that though a person is lonely in the journey of his call of belief, it is the end result that affects a larger group of people, and hence ideally includes her beloved, well wishers and community at large. Though the seed of belief germinates in an individual, and the individual is single-handedly responsible for growing that into a self-sustaining tree, it is the fruits which call for a community participation and celebration.

Not because they cook my food, I agreed with them realising that my focus area had been the journey for belief, while their focus was on the destination of the pursuit. I had no inhibitions in acknowledging the fact that two minds are mightier than one, especially the disagreeing ones.

Moving on, I felt that sometimes beliefs extract extraordinary outputs from people who desire to stretch. The likes of Narayan Murthy, Subroto Bagchi, Lance Armstrong, Abhinav Bindra fall in this category. When Anil Kumble decides to continue bowling with a bandage wrapped around his broken jaw, and manages to send Brian Lara back to pavilion, I would like to see it as strong determination and conviction being personified, which started with a small seed of self-belief. No doubt beliefs do make people achieve something. But the second kind of belief deprives one of an earthly pleasure that one is eligible to experience sometimes even by way of demanding a certain share of one’s existence. When I look around me, unfortunately, I see this second type of belief dominating over the first type, that too with a formidable margin. While the cause of the first type of beliefs are to rise above the current level of comfort, the reason for these beliefs arise from sincere good wishes for all from within a comfort zone. While the consequences of the first type of beliefs are difficult-to-attain achievements, the results of these beliefs are popularly accepted sacrifices.

Ma and Sumi have agreed to disagree with me, without being disagreeable. So after carefully listening to my two-fold belief idea, they asked me, why would somebody believe in the second scheme of the system, if it doesn’t work for them? As I appreciated their listenability, I had an internal quicksearch, and knew that I don’t have the answer. I was not meant to provide either. It was almost midnight, and we dispersed, playing with the newly found pearls and stones, as we prepared to dive in a more earthly bed this time.