How does one even have faith?

I don’t.

Find what you love and keep everything else at arms distance. That’s how I cope. Oh, and a lovely cocktail of antidepressants and mood stabilizers.

For me it’s all about being around people that want me around. At the age of 26 I’ve come to realize not very much can handle my dark sense of humor in real life. I’m too blunt to meet new people. And I don’t care for the boring “normal” people.

My point is, I’ve realized it’s all a joke. The ONly thing I have to do in life is be nice to others and be respectful. Things usually come full circle that way and I’m no longer looking for this grand scheme waiting to glorify my existence or something Yes I do have faith but for the most part I have my own personal relationship with God.

Things are never as bad as you fear nor as good as you hope. The sun will rise tomorrow just as it has for millions of years. Tomorrow will bring new challenges and rewards if you look for them. I don’t need faith to tell me that, just years of experience.

Are we talking about religious faith? Or, faith in general?

Some people are taught it, practically brainwashed with it. Other people see their parents and people around the, model it. Other people develop faith as they observe life and see things work out and they focus on how there are often silver linings and good people in the world.

I think we can have faith in some things and not in others. It isn’t black and white nor is it all encompassing in every part of life necessary.

@tinyfaery has pretty much summed it up. Just realize we are not here for ever, make yourself as comfortable as possible without harming and being harmed and get on with it, make the best of it by giving your own meaning to it all. Realize that we will soon be over on the other side, so don’t overload yourself.

If you are serious and not just playing the drama queen, then what you are describing is hopelessness.

I suspect you are a typical modern manque, so I’ll go with that. You need to stand up and do whatever you need to do to fix yourself. There must be things you’d like to do. You know the type people you like to be around. You must’ve had a dream of becoming something once. Work at these things. Be who you want to be. Get everybody out of your life who doesn’t belong there. Be uncompromising about this. Get mad if that’s what it takes. Just do it. You have only one life and you better make yours or fucking die trying. Stop letting the world make you their bitch. You really don’t have a choice once you glimpse the alternative.

And forget about the Big Picture: climate change, nuclear war, the plethora of injustice that is out there… You’re so crippled and without hope that there isn’t anything you would be able to do about all that even if you had an opportunity to do so. Because you’re literally hopeless. You need to concentrate on the business at hand. Get back to all that when you are well and whole.

The alternative is a rotten life of insecurity, fear, anger, guilt, anxiety, unhappiness, depression—all the trappings of an unfulfilled life. Society’s solution is meds. Lots and lots of meds of which you become dependent, tethered to doctors, and barely make it all bearable. In reality they solve nothing. They just bury some of the symptoms. The problems still exist and they will come to bite you when the meds wear off.

Life is work, it’s a piece of art, it’s yours only, and it is extremely rewarding when you get it right. It’s easier to get it right when you make getting it right top priority, more important than anybody or anything. Stop with the hopelessness and get to work. Your life depends on it.

My spin on faith is that it’s not meant to be a permanent condition. It is merely a posture of earnestness in seeking. If you are in a state where you have not achieved or acquired a goal that is still dawning on you or that you are being directed towards by another person who sees what you cannot yet see, faith is trusting the direction you are given and acting upon it earnestly. When you have experienced your goal, faith is no longer required.

Generally, we are incapable of not being in a state of belief. Saying “I don’t believe in anything” generally means that one doesn’t believe in something positive. But we believe in things as a precondition of our state of existence.

For someone caught in the grip of despair, turning a corner toward toward something more positive only happens when we’ve grown weary of directing our attention and belief toward all manner of hopelessness. Or perhaps after we’ve grown desperate for change. Or when we feel we’ve given our demons enough attention.

The truth is, though, that light and love are there all along for the taking. They are even what has been sustaining you through despair. They are never not there, and they are hidden in plain sight. All it takes is the dropping of the false beliefs that make life seem dire. (And all the reasons for despairing listed above are indeed totally and literally subsumed by the love and light that is available to the whole world.)

Faith would then belong to the person who cannot yet see that light, but who trusts in a source (be it a person or a text) that the light exists and is available. A faithful person acts earnestly to see it for themselves. Again when the light is seen, the need for faith disappears.

@Espiritus_Corvus mentions an unfulfilled life. Well, you can have plenty to eat, a good home, and a loving family and still feel unfulfilled. You may feel there is something missing; something more. You may try to fill it with stuff, toys, entrapment of riches, and still feel hollow. Finding your faith in a higher power may be what you need.

The absolute last thing I was referring to was food, shelter, and clothing. I was talking about finding your place in this world, be it rewarding work, or a feeling of usefulness, an independence and self determination, whatever it takes to attain a wholeness, a whole-some-ness. And even if there is a higher power, it is well known among believers that he/she/it will do nothing until you show you are willing to do the work to get there.

One needs open-mindedness and foresight to see through whatever is questioned for what it really is, or isn’t, and then accepting the truthful remaining result as fact. Dispose of the unnecessary garbage! Then adapt the mindset to the reality of what is and go on with life. That’s my faith!

“The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.” -Walt Whitman

“And because we are alive, the universe must be said to be alive. We are its consciousness as well as our own. We rise out of the cosmos and we see its mesh of patterns, and it strikes us as beautiful. And that feeling is the most important thing in all the universe—its culmination, like the color of the flower at first bloom on a wet morning.” -Kim Stanley Robinson

“The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.” -Chaucer

I keep things simple and attainable, like adding one more telephone pole to my daily walk.

“How does anyone believe in anything or anyone?”

Start by finding what you believe and disbelieve in yourself. Carry on from there.

“Where do you find strength or even a reason?”

I don’t find it. I create it. Stop looking for it. Start making it.

Thank you guys. I just get so lost sometimes and when I do, I feel like everyone here helps me. This site is a great escape from Facebook.