Belief- with a pinch of salt.

 Belief is something intrinsic in all of us and becomes a part of us without us even noticing it sometimes. Belief can be defined as something which we think is right. One simple real life example is that my wife tells me not to cut nails after dark and when I ask for the reason she says she doesn’t know. You can call it her belief that anyone should not cut the nails after dark. There is a simple logic for it that before electricity one could not see properly in dim light and the nail clipping equipment were crude so to avoid cuts people avoided cutting nails after dark. But all her life and her immediate forefather’s lives have seen electricity but this belief still continues. We can say it to be a superstitious belief now. Every culture must be having some beliefs like this which is going on for generations though it is logically obsolete.

Another real life example is that of my last article ‘A flaw in the grand design’ which evoked responses from me being 'antichrist' to 'my soul burning in hell'. This also is the outcome of belief about the existence of God. Neither of us has seen god but I don’t believe in god and the one who commented believes in god. Though neither of us has seen god but still one decides to believe in it and one not to believe in it. The decision of both to belief or not to belief can be as per what we have been taught by parents to believe or by anyone else or may be due to some applied logic which may be right or wrong.

Most of our beliefs are formed in childhood as our mind is uncorrupted and can be easily manipulated to believe or not to believe something. To come out of those beliefs are the most difficult as those beliefs tend to affect our behavior. Seldom do we go from one belief to neutrality. One set of belief which we found out to be wrong is generally overshadowed by another set of belief which we now consider as right. One example of the ill effects of misunderstood belief can be found in Islam. In Islam it is taught since child hood that there is only one God and that is Allah and he is the greatest. Continuous indoctrination of this creates a change in behavior where it becomes easy to convince one to kill and die for religion.

Belief also acts as a filter to all the information we receive. We receive so much information everyday and we either accept them or not accept them based on our belief about it. This affects our liking and disliking of a person or group of people. This way we gravitate towards people whose belief matches with ours. A strong belief coupled with power has caused great destructions in this world. White supremacy is a belief that led to killing and slavery of aboriginal in America. The Aryan race supremacy is a belief which led Hitler to kill Jews and attack other countries. A belief in supremacy of God caused the Crusade war.

Belief slowly becomes so engrained in our thoughts that it becomes behavior and difficult to change. Only when an individual understands what he believes and why does he believe then only he can decide on changing it. Though it is difficult to change but one can do it by taking small changes in life in the shape of forming new habit. I had a firm belief that I cannot be a writer but slowly through read cash I started writing and now though I cannot claim to be a writer but just ‘I write’. This journey started with my first article had has been continuing since then. Though I had this writer’s block type of thing and stopped writing two times but I still came back each time. So small changes in thought process followed by an effort to form a habit helped me in doing something which I never thought I would do or capable of doing.

So whatever is your belief, please question it from time to time, especially belief’s which are having a negative impact on you.