Belief

On NPR this morning I caught a snip bit of Forum. The guest speaker was neurologist Robert Burton on his latest book, "On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not". The 10 mins or so I heard was about about the different way people perceive things, as in, knowing something in your rational mind, versus believing something in your gut. The conscious mind, versus unconscious thoughts.

If I were a person of faith, I'd coin that up as some sort of divine revelation, since I spent the better part of the previous night pondering exactly that: How is it that I can know something in my head rationally, and yet have such a difficult time believing it with physicality.

Perhaps if I were a person of faith, then I'd have less of a problem, since so much of faith is about believing when you don't even know, or have no way of ever validating.

One might say, well, one should just believe what one already knows. Yeah, but should is such a dangerous word. Should. Whatever should may never be, and over the years I have learned to rely more on what is, instead of what should. Over the years, I have also learned to trust my gut feelings because belief has more than once come out of its closet as delusion in disguise. Over the years, I have learned not to trivialize my own feelings, no matter how irrational they may seem; and if the feeling is, then should can go fuck itself out the window.

So, I don't really know where that leaves me.
Other than perhaps that I know things will be fine.