What to believe in?

The tragedy of our times is that most of us no longer know what to believe in or even if we should believe at all.

One has the sense that everything was simpler, less complicated, when as children we accepted things as they were—or as we were told they were—even if they later turned out to be otherwise.

Today, you can’t be certain whether a food makes you gain weight or not, or whether God exists or we came about through a cosmic explosion. In magazines, you read one thing one day and the opposite the next. It seems researchers take a perverse pleasure in debunking each other’s theories.

And the funny thing is, it probably doesn’t matter all that much who’s right, if anyone even is. Everything is relative. There was a time when religious dogmas held more sway than logic, and though fortunately that has changed, it’s saddening—or rather, melancholic—that beliefs and values, however naïve, which do no harm and often do quite the opposite, are sidelined or dismissed for the sake of dull pragmatism or the cold indifference so fashionable today.

Sometimes it feels like there’s no room for God in our lives. An army of belligerent atheists has emerged, intent on freeing us from what they see as the childish enslavement to an imaginary higher being, wielded by the Church for centuries to frighten us and keep us under its yoke with threats of hell.

But we’re no longer in the Middle Ages, and today everyone believes (or doesn’t) in what they choose. If someone finds comfort in believing there’s a God watching over us, or has faith in their Virgin del Carmen or their prayer card of Fray Leopoldo de Alpandeire, why should anyone come along and try to make them abandon those beliefs? Especially when all they offer in return is nothingness—cold, sterile, silent.

These people don’t understand that there’s something romantic and sentimental about God, something science can never replace. There’s a warm mystery in Christmas, in guardian angels, in prayers, and in the intimacy of an empty church.

Thanks to science, we live better, they say, though at times, looking around, one doubts it. We have faster, more reliable methods in fields where we once relied on effort and traditional knowledge—which, sadly, is being lost—but that doesn’t make us happier. Having an iPhone, a BlackBerry, or a car with features boasting an ever-growing list of acronyms like ABS, GPS, or TDCi doesn’t console us when we lose our job or when a loved one falls ill.

We live aimlessly, caught up in the daily grind, amassing money to spend on new clothes we soon tire of, on a pricier mobile with dozens of functions we don’t use, on trips to places we don’t enjoy because we’re too busy taking hundreds of photos with our digital cameras and rushing to tick off the mandatory visits to monuments.

When a problem, an illness, or a misfortune disrupts that frenetic pace, we feel lost, like castaways washed up on a shore of despair with a handful of useless gadgets that won’t help us find our way home. Then we realize we have nothing to hold onto, nothing to cling to. When everything’s going well, we think we’re invincible and drift away from our core, seduced by the siren songs of superficial things we believe will bring us happiness: success, money, popularity…

Why do we search so far afield and strive for things we won’t take with us from this world? There’s a forgotten corner within us, waiting to be discovered. Though it’s difficult, we’d be happier if we believed, above all, in ourselves, because we come into this world alone and we’ll leave it alone. We’d be happier if, instead of fighting pointless battles, we tried to bring out the unique being within us, to become what we’re capable of being, regardless of how much money or possessions we have or who we are.

And it’s just as important to choose our travelling companions wisely. Often, we go to great lengths to please and impress people who, the next day, will pass us by without a glance and abandon us in tough times. True friends are those who accept us as we are, who don’t try to change us, who care about us genuinely, selflessly.

And family, so undervalued by some today—who see it as something that ties us down and holds us back—can offer support and refuge. Family is the link between generations, like a chain, and if it breaks, we’ll end up as loose links, part of nothing. A bridge needs several stones.

Can it be said, as some claim, that the world is divided between those who believe in something and those who believe in nothing? It must be unsettling to believe in nothing, to view everything with suspicion and cynicism.

I believe that humans always believe in something, even if unconsciously, even if it’s not revealed until a moment when everything seems against them. We need to believe in something; we need a point of support. Everyone chooses their own, and only time will tell if they chose wisely.