Believing in Ourselves, From Ourselves, For Ourselves

In building ourselves us, in coming to our own sense of knowing, in learning to love.

“You’ve just got to believe in yourself.”

We have all heard this (or a similar) refrain throughout our lives. If we want to make something happen, if we want to accomplish our goals - we must first and foremost believe in ourselves. This idea has been embedded in us and for good reason.

I struggled growing up with the word believe. Throughout much of my life, I struggled to “cross the finish line” - I struggled to translate my goals into reality, I struggled to become the person I longed to be. And this idea of believing in yourself kept popping up in various ways and forms.

For example, I always wanted to be a musician and I understood that there was an inherent important in believing I could become a musician - yet, still, I struggled and I struggled to make any headway.

We have likely all encountered someone (perhaps ourselves) say that they believe in themselves, but we can feel that there is not a true weight behind it. There is a bridge between stating a belief in something and that essential quality of embodying that belief.

One thing I wanted to reflect on is that the actual word “believe” has been de-coupled from true meaning for a lot of us. In part, I think this is because many of us rarely witness people who truly embody their beliefs - we live in a time of not only homogenization, but where we are constantly wearing the primary mask that society asks us to wear. Who we are shifts, like water, to fit the vessel society provides for us.

Further, many of us have been raised to see beliefs as a set of memorized facts. If we exist as piggy banks full of factoid coins that we can pull out of our wisdom wallet, then to “believe” in something is merely to keep that coin handy. In a consumer society, “belief” is something that we purchase, hold on to, and discard like any-other-old-thing.

A definition of believe is to “accept something as true”. What does it mean to accept something as true? Does it mean we know a fact about something, so we accept it as true? Does that mean what we believe in will constantly shift, as we toss out old facts and receive new ones? Or, is something missing here - perhaps, something a bit more intense.

Many of us understand that a “belief” represents the most powerful form an idea can take - an idea that is capable of shaping our very identity and path as a person. We know, intellectually, that the realm of beliefs is the realm of the sacred - for beliefs are the ideas that define who we are.

Yet, we are surrounded by the concept of “belief” - we ourselves proclaim that we “believe in God” or that we “believe in science”. We decorate our cars and our yards with this belief, we surround ourselves with people with similar beliefs. Our beliefs organize us into segregated factions and we bristle with animosity towards people who piggy banks are full of beliefs that conflict with our own.

Many of us receive our beliefs much like we receive other subscriptions goods. We find ourselves in a specific demographic and the defining characteristic of our demographic is that we believe the same general things - that if we were to all dump out our piggy banks we would find the same collections of coins.

As part of the group, we receive belief updates on a regular basis. Often times we receive this programming directly from the media - whether we watch Fox News or MSNBC or NPR or whatever, each of these news outlets represents a belief subscription service for a different demographic. It is not uncommon for a “political dialog” to simply be defined by a repetition of what was heard on television.

If who we are is defined by the collective beliefs of our demographic group, then who we are is as sturdy as a house of cards. Many of us are accustomed to this - I know that I grew quite adept at staying on-top of ever-evolving language, social norms, and what-have-you. I grew quite proud of my ability to be like water and shift who I was to fit into the beliefs that we (the we of whatever social strata I was in) all shared.

We have a tendency, as a society, to police beliefs quite intensely. This isn’t illogical - we are all quite cognizant how certain beliefs can lead to catastrophic harm. As a Jewish person of Eastern European descent, the power of beliefs to lead people to literal genocide was a constant presence in my upbringing and education.

Living in fear, we do not trust other people to believe for themselves and the people around us do not trust us to believe for ourselves. Thus, we create a constellation of beliefs outside of ourselves and we grab onto the one that fits our life best - who we are as individuals is, thus, defined by the external beliefs we find ourselves steeped in. We receive great comfort in these beliefs and the shared company we receive along with them. We bristle in fear like a porcupine in the face of oppositional beliefs and those people bristle at us in return in the same way - creating a feedback loop of fear and animosity.

There is a deep, deep human fear of the other. For the other is capable of treating us as less-than-human. The other is capable of killing us without remorse - the other is to be feared above all else, the other is evil. And, it is always the people who believe in the other, that, in reality, act like the other. The Nazi Party was dedicated to the collective belief that Jewish people were the other and, in retaliation to this belief, they acted as the other - they became the embodiment of human evil in their own belief of the other.

What am I getting to? Why am I saying all of this? Our beliefs shape “who we are” and shape the quality of our life. When we do not come to our own beliefs, the control over our quality of life is taken from us to a severe degree. This has important societal ramifications - but, it also opens to door to new possibilities of self-discovery and growth!

First, as a society, when our beliefs are defined externally for us, “who we are” becomes rigid and fragile. As such, we view conflicting beliefs as grave threats to “who we are”. No belief embodies this better than “I am a good person”. Every belief demographic holds onto this belief - “I am a good person, we are good people”.

But, where does this belief that come from? What does “good” mean? How do I “be good”? How do I know that I am “good”? How do I know that other people think that I am “good”? Who gets to decide that I am “good”?

When our sense of self is as fragile as a deck of cards, then we become deeply insecure in our “goodness”. We dedicate ourselves to being “good” - yet, we know not what “good” is, because it is a belief that we did not come up and that we did not discover for ourselves.

As a result, when someone challenges our beliefs, they are also challenging our “goodness”, for our sense of self is not sturdy enough to withstand the existence of potentially conflicting beliefs. And so, lacking the internal sense that we are “good”, we see the other everywhere we look and we let those others know that they are, indeed, the others.

We have come to a point in our society where everything is defined by the other. In the 21st century United States, Republicans and Democrats aren’t even concerned with governance - they are concerned with the other. When a society becomes solely concerned with the other, things begin to unravel and, quite often, in deeply terrifying ways.

It can feel of utmost urgency to play this political game of the others. Yet, as long as our own sense of self is fragile, we will always reinforce the escalating cycle of othering. Captured in the maelstrom of societal othering, we never provide our own selves the space and permission to look inward, to learn how to believe in ourselves from within ourselves.

When we are born, we receive beliefs from the people that raise us. As children, the world around us throws ideas and beliefs at us and it is natural to accept these beliefs. Yet, there is a moment when we become aware of ourselves, we remember who we are, and we realize that we have the great power to investigate our reality for ourselves.

When we receive our beliefs from outside of ourselves - for, just think of how many thing we believe in that we have never truly experienced for ourselves - we do not learn the art of fortifying and strengthening our own sense of self and our developing our own beliefs.

If beliefs given to us from the outside are like playing cards, then the beliefs we come to for ourselves are like steel beams and granite monoliths. Instead of being fragile, we become impenetrable. Other peoples’ beliefs cannot shatter our own sense of self or our sense of “goodness” because we have built ourselves up with beliefs that we have come to embody for ourselves. This kind of belief is not a coin we keep in our piggy banks - no, this kind of belief becomes an aspect of who we are!

This is not to say that we become rigid and closed-minded in our beliefs - it is to say we become certain. When we are deeply certain in our beliefs, we can hear other peoples’ beliefs without feeling threatened. It is only when we are deeply certain in “who we are” that we can ever truly receive and listen to other people. For as long as our sense of self is fragile and as long as we assume the people around us are fragile, we will walk through the world in fear.

Further, when we become deeply certain in our own selves, when we let our beliefs imbue our souls with their substance, when we become powerful in our knowing and understanding of who we are - then we can open ourselves up to others with intention. We become capable of consciously choosing to be vulnerable. In our strength, we become capable of vulnerability without fear - this is one side of love!

Likewise, when we become powerful in the radiance of our own beliefs, we can choose to be impenetrable. We can consciously and intentionally set our boundaries such that we are immovable in our sense of self. We can be the person we wish to be, even when others project their beliefs onto us. In our strength, we become capable of invulnerability without fear - this is the other side of love!

There are few feelings more beautiful than when we come to truly know something for ourselves. And it is truly intoxicating the more it happens - for, when we come to our own beliefs for our own selves, we are quite literally expanding our essence out into the world around us. We begin to see our beliefs manifest into action, as though summer has come and the snowy-mountain run-off has turned our creek into a raging river.

Powerful in our beliefs, we cannot be othered and we have no need to other. This does not mean we lose sight of threats to our well-being - but it does mean we are able to pull ourselves away from the societal hurricane of othering. For the storm of othering requires our energy as fuel and, when we are strong enough to protect our energy, the storm is pacified in its loss.

In stepping into our own beliefs and being forged in their flames, we not only make our own lives more beautiful, but we open up the paths for the world around us to be made more beautiful. I truly believe that people have known this for millennia and that teaching people to step into their own beliefs is the central purpose of nearly all coming-of-age rites and passages.

Many of us become insecure when we think of focusing more on ourselves, when the world is the way that it is. Being engaged in everything that is happening all around us feels like a necessary part of being a “good person” - that is part of the external belief system many of us have been steeped in.

Yet, when we do the work to build ourselves up, we do not become timid and meek hermits - we become immensely powerful. We become confrontational because we become invulnerable and impenetrable. We become willing to give all of ourselves to what is right, even when it is a dangerous path to walk. For, in a sense, we become what is right.

And so I will wrap this up with a prayer of sorts, for me and, if you’d like it, for you too: May we give ourselves space to tend to ourselves. May we give ourselves the space to heal. May we give ourselves the space to not know what we believe - to face the immense fear of this unknowing! - so that we may have space to recognize what we truly do. May we step into a greater knowing for ourselves and become galvanized in our own beliefs. And in our knowing, may we embody love in all that we do.