CASTILLO, Arvin Paul H. November 19, 2013

Risk

“Hindi mo kasalanan kung ipanganak kang mahirap. Ngunit, kapag lumaki kang mahirap pa rin, sa’yo na ang sisi dahil hindi ka nagsikap.”
These are words that are redundantly served at our dining table by my father, son of two farmers, an ex-janitor, but because of extreme hard work and perseverance, happened to become a doctor. For him, the future is certain; if you just strive your best, a pot of gold is surely and patiently waiting for you at the end of the rainbow.
A decade of feeding from and growing in this food-for-thought had deeply embossed in my mind an image of a predictable life. It is as if great future results from correctly and devotedly following a life-formula, that future is almost a summation of all the positive and negative things one has done to his life, that his future is by and because of him, that future is something known beforehand and controllable.
However, existing for almost another decade in this universe has taught me that the notion of life is exactly the opposite of what my father had strongly instilled in me during my early years. Through time, life proved and continuously proves to be an unsolvable mystery, a complex maze, a field of surprises, that even more than or equal to a second from now is unknown, that Forrest Gump would even metaphorize as “a box of chocolate with which you never know what you’ll get”. This, in my eighteenth year that I have just realized, had become my object of faith. Despite its uncertainties, the future carries a transcendent value, something unexplainable, an incognito of knowledge, yet which I paradoxically completely commit and surrender the whole of myself into. The future is what motivates me to act and live every single day. It is what influences my every move, my every decision, my every breath. I have faith in the future, my future. For more clarity of this thesis, it feels necessary for me to explain my personal idea of faith.
In Faith as a Dimension of the Human, Haight says that the various experiences of the human can give birth to his faith. Through my own existence, I certainly agree that this notion holds to be true. I reckon that in my everyday living, the things that are happening to me are what dictate the kind of faith I have, what and how I see, think and believe future to be. How I learned and realized through the surprises of my every day that the future is unpredictable just manifests how my very fundamental life-moments shaped my faith in the future. My faith in the future, my future, roots from these different happenings.
Another thing that Haight mentioned about faith is that it is the human’s ever-seeking action for that nothing that can satisfy their demands. This ironically follows his statement about a human existence consisting in freedom. For in my own perspective, it seems that faith implies that existing as human is a pitiful state; despite his freedom to think, to commit the self with determination, to act in a stable and consistent manner, he is never “free” for never ever having a finite object that can supply what his action demands. There is still a bounded area, where his ultimate satisfaction is, that he cannot ever pervade. Faith while acting as a hegemonic tool that perpetually supplies that energy for human action, to continue to strive, simultaneously proves that the human are innately and inherently trapped to this existing reality (“For even in the absence of an object that corresponds to the demand of action, human beings still must choose”). For me, we have the faith to blindingly save us; but, faith will never deny, though lurkingly, that we are never free. We may think as if we are free but the reality is that, this faith, is just, so to say, a dimension of our human existence, an artificial creation of our quest for salvation, a defense mechanism that is inevitably created against our inherent characteristics as slaves of a never ending quest for satisfaction, for salvation.
Superimposing this personal analysis of faith to my object of faith which is the future, I must say that faith truly puts me into a pitiful state. I, as human, forever will continue to persevere for my father’s golden pot at the end of the rainbow, which whenever I achieve, will never be enough to satiate my ultimate need; for there will always be even greater things, even bigger golden pots at the end of other rainbows. In literal words, the future is great, but the future will never be great enough for me. Life is indeed an infinite but inevitable quest for the uncertain future. Though I have the power to think, to decide, to commit myself into anything, I can never ever have what I really need. And thus, I am not free. Yet, faith for Haight is a selfless devotion of the self in spite being for something surreal, in spite being a quest for an unreachable and impossible something that will satiate the mundane need. It is indeed. It is an ultimate sacrifice. It is to ultimately surrender the self for something you can never have. This is how I see faith.
It is how and what I dedicate my whole being to. To strive for the golden pots. To continue living despite life’s adversities. To continue living despite the uncertainties. To not believing but continue striving for that better life for me and for my family. To continue to be trapped as a slave of the existing reality that I am never free of myself, of my own life, of my own future. This is the truth I profoundly realize is oozing from my core, centering me, my every action.
Nothing is certain. It is my faith.