“If you really believe you can fly, you probably can.” I quote it every time I speak to people about belief and truth. I see an odd relationship between these two words – “truth” and “belief”. In fact, I often define truth in one word as belief.
What you believe may not be true for most, but it is your reality. I have often heard people say that “Belief is not what ultimately matters, the truth is. In other words, everyone is entitled to their own belief but they are not entitled to their own truth. Our believing in something doesn’t make it true.” What if, it is a fallacy? Or isn’t it implied?
Truth We Know
Isn’t everything we think as true is what we believe? Technically, nothing is true or only what majority believes to be true is true. We answer so many questions each day based on our beliefs that we forget, they may not be true for someone else. Truth is a vague term, we call it fact and sometimes reality while it is just a set of widely accepted beliefs. We know most of our science is based on assumption or beliefs. If someone new comes up with a new set of beliefs they are hard to digest and we challenge them with our beliefs that we call truth.
The belief that Sun is hot, is a truth or is it a popular belief? There are theories which state that the Sun is cold.
Another belief that ‘honesty is the best policy’, is popular but may not be true.
or the belief that ‘God created the world’, may be true for some but others actually have no idea.
And finally, the belief that everyone dies, may seem like the only truth out there or is it? There is probably someone out there who challenges it. I would play equivocal here, for what we know now may seem true but you never know.
Reality and Stories
I know it is not making any sense and we all want everything to make sense at some level. Where our “sense of reality” is most challenged are the areas in which the most controversies exist. This is the only reason that I am writing on this topic, we often overlook something that challenges our beliefs.
We humans think in stories and beliefs are the stories we tell ourselves to define our personal reality. Everyone has a belief system that they employ, and it is through this system that we individually, make sense of the world around us.
We see people constructing all kinds of beliefs around which they develop stories about how the world works. As humans, we have a tendency of using all these stories to cope with all the events in our lives and they become the very reality we believe in.
Religious Equation
Beliefs are often considered as dogmas or as religious beliefs, but if we think critically there are scientific as well as philosophical beliefs in relation to the different spheres of our lives. A belief need not have any basis in reality as long as it provides an adequate explanation that is the very reason it is associated with religion. In fact, religion is the only form in which true potential can be understood. It is the only area where we don’t ask for explanations, too bad we call it faith and try to be aloof.
Choose Wisely
What we believe is our truth, our reality and that can’t be defied. It is something that we personally choose to form in our minds, the way we want to perceive the world around us. It is the only way we recognize some idea or thing is true and valid.
Our beliefs are only things that we decide to think are true, based on the information we have gathered up until this point in our lives. We often say that we question all our beliefs but we never question the truth.
“This is how humans are: we question all our beliefs, except for the ones we really believe, and those we never think to question. “ – Orson Scott Card
P.S. Feel free to share what you think of beliefs. You never know what changes your reality.
