Belief

As they announce a new Pope, I am sat wondering what it is to believe. If you believe in something, you have hopes and fears wrapped around your idea of what it is. You may make choices based upon it and it may guide decisions that could be life changing to you.

As much as a part of me really wishes I didn't, I believe in the ghosts and the monsters.  This is a belief that terrifies me and leaves me with no good options.  It is either a world taken over by monsters and given over to whatever it is they want, or to follow the path of the ghosts, knowing that may well mean dying.  Out of the two, I would obviously choose the later - why give a world for a selfish means? It is the only obvious answer.

Belief, after all, does not bring certainty. If anything, it can lead to more questions than answers and more shaky steps than solid ground and this is certainly the case for me.  I know a lot of people believe in ghosts, and claim to have seen them - the apparitions of the dead and lost love ones of the past.  Somehow these are not the same, at least not to me, not right now - and that leads me to questions and no where to look for answers.  It frustrates me to know answers I do find may not refer back to the right thing. I can barely stand to think of how little I really know and how much there is to find out, while at the same time having a looming sense of inevitability - It will happen, it does have to be stopped.  A sense of urgency in the task while flailing into a chasm of vast dark shadows.

Belief, it seems, does not equate knowledge, or security - or sanity.  It has been keeping me awake a bit lately. Mulling things over and trying to work out what it is I am meant to do with this belief. When there is a deity, the obvious choice is to pray and follow their written practises, rules and guidance.  Here, there are none. Certainly none I am aware of. No one to ask, no one to check against and no way of knowing if the choices I make are based upon the right assumptions. What if I followed a path in the belief it was the ghosts will when that would not at all stop the monsters? What then?

I don't have answers and I don't like not having answers, or a somewhere to find them. It scares me.  All of it does. 

Belief is a scary thing.