Blind faith.

The idea of blind faith has been consuming me this week. What I started to realize is that, to some extent, the artists (and other people) that we consider to be successful must have lived off of blind faith at some point. I came to this conclusion because there is no possible way that any of them got as far as they did without encountering any criticism, judgment, self-doubt, insecurity, or rejection. They must have encountered one or all of those things and then decided to continue anyway. Maybe the term blind faith implies too much of a horse with blinders image, but so what? What is the worst that could possibly happen if someone were to ignore all of those criticisms and judgments and rejections? Failure? Criticism and rejection already feels like failure, so I'm not sure what failure could really be other than giving up. Giving up would be losing faith. And losing faith would just be the end of that dream or goal. So then it would be as if the process of giving up were the failure, except giving up is a decision. So then each time judgment or self-doubt or rejection or criticism comes up, we have to just keep going, with blind faith, because anything else would be self-induced failure. A journey or trip without bumps in the road, without detours or sudden left turns, simply does not exist. No journey is a straight shot and no journey is easy. Well…some are easy, but those journeys are boring, at least in my experience. 

So what about blind faith? What if every time something felt bad, like a comment from a peer or mentor, or a wave of nauseating self-doubt and insecurity, we decided to just keep going? What would that look like, to just go on in blind faith? I think that would look like perseverance. Perseverance in our own unique journeys toward self-discovery and self-expression might be an essential part of living a fulfilling, joy-filled, authentic life.