There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills. – Buddha
Last night I watched Barack Obama officially accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for President in front of 84,000 people at Mile High in Denver. It was a stirring sight. People in the audience were crying. I got choked up a bit too. There was the actual feeling that yes, yes maybe things really can change, maybe there is hope yet.
Hope. Faith. Belief. These are not concepts that I often associate with myself. I am a skeptic. I don’t believe in belief without evidence. When I updated my Facebook status last night I was only able to say that I ‘really want to believe’. But then this morning I read those words from the Buddha and I realized something. Skepticism and doubt are healthy when they are applied to empirical claims but unhealthy when applied to people. They become doubly unhealthy when applied to oneself.
7 years ago I reached, what was at that time, the lowest point in my life. I was broke, depressed, in a miserable marriage to a woman who was exhibiting signs of severe emotional and mental instability, and I hated my life. I wanted to disappear, to run away, to ditch Ryan Sutter for good and become somebody else. I even went so far as to research what would be involved, to make plans for how I could go “to work” one day and never be seen again. I didn’t want to leave my son, my father, my brothers or my sister, but I felt I was a complete and total failure and that my life would never be salvageable. Today, on the other hand, I am happy with my work, married to a wonderful loving woman, live in a beautiful home, have a rich personal life, and wouldn’t wish to be anywhere else in the world then where I am right now. I’m not saying there aren’t things I wish were different. I wish my father, brother and sister could be a part of my life, I wish my mother wasn’t ill, I wish Rhett was alive, but I no longer doubt that bad situations can be improved. I no longer believe that things can be hopeless. As long as there is breath, as long as there is life, things can improve. This is the basis of hope and every day that I walk in my front door I am reminded of it.
What does this have to do with Barack Obama?
Well, it is extremely easy to become so cynical that you give up on the idea that things can change. As revealed in my blog post two weeks ago, I have an internal emotional history of being cynical about the idea that people like me or accept me, so cynicism comes naturally to me. When Barack didn’t vote the way I wanted him to on the FISA bill I was ready to jump ship, to lump him in with all the other calculating, snake-oil politicians who got your hopes up just to get your votes and then started dancing to the tune of the lobbyists who financed them. I was so ready to doubt.
And really, who can blame me? Wasn’t I lied to my entire life by the Watchtower Society? Wasn’t I lied to by two ex-wives who promised to love me and treat me with respect? Wasn’t I lied to in the 2000 election when the Republicans stole it? Haven’t I been let down over and over and over again? Well… yes. But this is where skepticism and hope can help each other out.
To be skeptical is to reserve your hope, reserve your faith, for people and situations that really earn it. To be skeptical is also to be realistic about your expectations of the things and people who you choose to put faith in. You can’t just run around believing in whatever anybody wants you to believe. When a man shows up touting the “audacity of hope” and telling you he’s going to bring “change we can believe in” it raises both hope and skepticism levels. I really really want it to be true, but the more I want it to be true, the more skeptical I am that it will be. As the two forces struggle against each other a kind of balance is attained until something changes that balance. In my case, the FISA vote upset the delicate balance of power between skepticism and hope. While watching the speech last night I found I still couldn’t muster up exactly the same enthusiasm and hope that I had held earlier in his campaign but that at the very least I found that I wanted to do so, which is something.
For me, hope and faith are still fragile things and are difficult for me to cultivate. I no longer have faith in the Christian mythology or in the existence of the supernatural, but I try to cultivate faith that, as artifacts of human intellect and passion, the religious traditions of the world have some wisdom and goodness embedded within them and that it’s worth ferreting out. I have lost most of the close friends I have ever known and all my closest family members to religious division, mental illness or death but I try to cultivate faith that despite the potential for loss, relationships are still worth finding and nurturing. Back in 2004, I came into the world of politics naively from a cult background in which “political neutrality” was enforced and since that day I have had to deal with paying attention to the most depressing political reality this country has seen since I was born. In my enthusiasm for change I actually canvassed door-to-door for Kerry in 2004 and was crushed when Bush was re-elected. I sincerely want this change to happen, I sincerely want to believe it will, and I’m looking for the strength to have a little faith that it is possible.
We’ll see.
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