The Components of Belief

 

I could exclaim, “Let’s make-believe!” As if we haven’t already started, each and every one of us, without exception.

Experience serves as one component of belief, and flows immediately into interpretation, which is another component of belief.

Within interpretation, we identify, categorize, ignore, focus on, associate all sorts of notions. We contextualize. We isolate. We disregard. Are the notions themselves a component of a belief, or are they so dependent on the context of interpretation that they don’t exist enough on their own to be categorized as a component?

(Language as a medium isn’t the best thing to do this with, but it’s the only thing I can do this with.)

Belief can be written of as a thing that’s constructed out of components, while at the same time being a dynamic process sustained by those components. Belief is a state of becoming without beginning, but in this blog about my beliefs, well, I had to begin somewhere.

The interpretation aspect takes that flow, becomes an eddy, washes back and influences the experience: prompting action, shaping reality.

That’s what I believe, anyway, and the position to state what I believe about belief isn’t so much being “above it all” as it is being in a snug little knot of a pardox. I do do my best to pursue the truth, when I am at my best—even as I might be uncertain if we are ultimately subject to the truth or if truth must be actively pursued and represented, as if those are contradictory.

Sometimes, the only way out is through. The symbols, the metaphors, the representation, the context.

And sometimes, we believe what is not true so that it can become so.

Let’s make-believe.