Throughout my life I feel like I've had several heroes I often haven't acknowledged in my mind. My dad has been a hero of mine, but I didn't realize it at first because I only recognized his faults, or rather, our dissimilarities. When he woke me up in the morning by singing Broadway tunes or reached back from the front seat of the car to stop my brother and I from fighting, I tallied up the instances and painted him as a negative force in my life. The same with my mother, and until recently my brother.
I had friends growing up and still have friends today who act as heroes of mine, but because of my pride I'm often afraid to define them as heroes. Calling them heroes seems to give them a higher ranking than me in life's hierarchy. But I realize they've been my heroes. I've looked up to them, I've often imitated subtleties in their actions and inflections in their voices, and even repeated whole movements and phrases because I saw how it worked for them and believed it would help me improve if I did the same. In this way, they have been Gods to me.
God seems to be a word some use to describe the attractions of the universe, while others use it to describe chaos. For some he is a very strong image in their mind, for others he is shapeless, impossible to even imagine. I use “he” to describe God only because it’s more convenient when explaining my point, but God is genderless, or a specific gender depending what guides you.
God is necessary to survive and though some may reject his existence, faith in God exists in all our lives in some form or another. Every self-help book gives us something to believe in: smile every day and fake it till you make it, or set specific goals so you have something to reach for. We put just as much faith into these ideas as an ultra orthodox Jew puts into the words of the Torah. While one believes that the Boston Celtics winning the NBA championship will bring happiness, another believes the same results will occur after the extermination of homosexuality. Several years ago Boston was a town of losing sports teams. There was a curse that had to be broken and we were led to believe that it would take 100 years to break.
A curse is just the mind’s way of saying there is no God or that God is dead or that God wishes ill upon you. If one feels cursed then he or she merely doesn’t believe in him or herself. No one is cursed as long as they have faith, and faith is simply, one’s desire to go on and experience life. One can lose faith for a variety of reasons. If someone cheats on a guy, he might lose interest in meeting anyone else, or in other words, he might lose faith that there is reason to the universe, especially if he doesn’t examine the cause and effect of his life in detail. However, he doesn’t have to analyze. He just needs to change the dynamics and definitions of his faith. Whereas before he may of thought it impossible for someone to cheat on him, now he must realize that it is possible, but preventable, and that cheating is not yet confirmed to be a definite in every relationship.
That ability to redefine your faith differentiates you from a fanatic who follows a strict image and code that cannot be broken, someone who doesn’t understand that the universe is shifting around them.
However, one might also say that if you don’t back down from your beliefs then the universe will shift at your command.
Whether the definition of your God changes or not, the faith must remain strong in order to remain happy and in order to keep a strong faith one must remain happy. Happiness and faith seem to be the same and so when we pray to God to end suffering around the world, or help our favorite sports team win the championship, or get some guy or girl to like us, we’re simply asking a controllable universe to grant us happiness. If the universe were uncontrollable then what would be the point? Even those who believe in predestination still believe that their place in the afterlife can be controlled. So control is always present in the mind of someone who is faithful. It’s those who have no faith who feel everything is out of their control, the world is chaotic, happiness is beyond their reach, no one can save them, until they’ve lost site of any sort of direction or reason for existence.
This is why the need for religion is understandable, yet the conflicts amongst various religious groups is laughable.
If you don’t have a strong sense of who you might take it out on others. When I’m onstage telling jokes that I’ve told so many times the reason for humor has escaped me, I tend to lose drive, and I am distracted by anything and everything in my path. Someone texting on their cell phone might inspire a tirade. A heckler might lead me to believe that all audiences are bad. God is simply the ability to know what you want in this world be strong enough (faithful enough, strong minded enough, focused enough) to get it. Sometimes I write a new joke and for me that new joke acts as God for the night, delivering me past any distractions or reason for negativity.
God is simply coal in our fuel tanks, which probably explains why those who are bad on Christmas get coal, so they no longer drift from faith, but rather steam roll and accelerate toward their goals and happiness.
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