Growing up in a church-going family, faith played a very important part in lives. Faith, to me, is to understand and trust that everything will work out for my good. There is no set definition for it. It is different for every person. It comes from the heart and from the comfort and feeling it leaves you with. Having faith in yourself, a decision you’ve made, or in another person not to let you down can be scary, but it can also leave you will an unexplainable peace. Trusting and having faith fully that nothing can happen that faith in God can’t fix is the most calming feelings.
Faith is always there with me before I hit the ups and downs. My faith in God has guided me to exactly where I need to be. Without faith in myself, it is almost impossible to believe that one can make it anywhere in their life. Whether it is to make the grade one needs on a test or whether or not to take a job opportunity, faith is there. Now of course, my faith is in God. Not everyone believes in God. It is still equally important to have faith in oneself. After all, it is the physical body that has to go through with the actions. Having confidence to follow through on an action can cause faith to grow.
Sometimes things can happen to test our faith in ourselves. There have been times when I thought that there is no point in trusting in faith because so much has happened to hurt me that faith and trust hasn’t gotten me anywhere so far. It wasn’t until I looked back on the “me” that I was growing up, the “me” in high school/early college or even the “me” from 6 months ago. Things happen to change us and rock our world. They change us either for the better or for the worse. We have the control to how it affects us. We can either run from it or learn from it and let it make us stronger.
We can learn to have stronger love, stronger hope in people, and altogether stronger faith. I’ve learned that the more I go through, the stronger I get and the more that I learn, the more faith I have in myself and in God. Between the two of us, anything and everything can be done. Faith can be the gut feeling one has before they kiss a girl for the first time or cliff diving and knowing that you’re going to come back up for air. Faith is getting up every day and living. This world is a cruel world sometimes. Getting out of bed and starting the day can be downright scary.
One never knows what could happen but that is where faith steps in. Faith is what balances out our fears and lets us know that everything will turn out the way it is meant to be. Without faith, life would be hard to live. Losing faith in oneself, faith in your friends, family, life, jobs, God, etc. has to be exhausting. Faith can be a make it or break it aspect to have in life. Even through the hard times, it’s always best to have faith to know that everything will work out for the better Faith’s partner is reason. Faith can guide reasoning to make the right decision that is best.
Reasoning is the thought process that takes one from where they are to where they want to be. It helps them each step of the way with the technical difficulties. It is the thought process of pro/con lists, decision making, and figuring out exactly what would be best for the future. When one hits a spot in life when they don’t know exactly what to do, with the help of faith and reasoning, one can move on from the struggle knowing that they learned, they know what to do next, and they have faith to guide them. With a plan in hand, it is hard to be defeated but things don’t always go as planned.
Sometimes, it rains on the day of the outdoor wedding. Oops! Reasoning can tell one that just because one thing goes wrong, doesn’t mean it’s over. There should always be a backup plan. If one listens, reasoning is usually there from the start. It seems easy to live life on a whim. Writing a paper, doing class work, or any assignment last minute without planning can be a bit of a disaster. With reasoning and planning out, writing out an outline, doing homework early, there is no stress. Learning from mistakes factors into your reasoning for the next time you have a project or paper due.
If we learn to listen to reason from the beginning, we will probably find it is to benefit us not to harm us. When we were all in kindergarten, our teachers would ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wanted to be an astronaut one day and a pastor the next. Every other day I came up with a different scenario of my life. What job I would have, who my wife would be, what she would look like, how many kids would I have, where would I live, what car would I drive, would I own a boat, would I have a lake house, would I be a NBA star, etc. All of that is imagination.
As children, our imagination runs wild with ideas about games to entertain ourselves and our whole life would be planned out by the time recess was over. We were thought to dream and use our imaginations from our first day of school. That’s where it all starts. Eventually, something has to stick. We stand by that image that child us came up with years ago and we run with it. We become astronauts, pastors, famous singers, doctors, and lawyers. We live the life that is surrounded by our childhood imagination. We dreamt of ourselves being successful and most of us chase that our whole lives to be such.
We don’t realize that even though our imagination, sadly may have been lost with our childhood, it still affects our present life. Some of the lucky ones know what they want to be from day one. They grow up and breeze through school, fight through medical school and become a doctor. Some of us still have no idea. We have so many ideas that we can’t decide which path to take. Those who are lucky enough to use their imagination in their adult lives are the creators of excitement. They entertain us with movies, technology, books, art, poems, roller coasters, etc. To further explain, I don’t believe that one trumps the other.
To figure out the path in which we would be most successful and happy with, we must use a happy medium between all three. The three are like a circle of friends who help each other out. Without imagination, life would be plain boring. Many of the luxuries, such as fast advancing cell phones, that we enjoy every day would be no more. Thankfully for us, there are adults who don’t lose their imagination. Without faith, our imagination would not expand and become reality. If Steve Jobs didn’t have faith in himself, he may have never had the confidence to actually share his ideas.
He may never have grown up to be who he was meant to be. When we have faith in ourselves, there isn’t much that can go wrong that will break us. Without reason, our image and faith cannot be followed through. Organization and planning is important parts of reasoning. Had Jobs not planned ahead and used reasoning, the make and model of the iPhone could have turned out to be a disaster. He could have pitched his idea and the company may have hated it. Luckily Jobs had all three on his side. He knew that he had to have faith in himself, reasoning to have a successful and well liked product, and it all started from his imagination.
He became one of the most well-known people in the world for his invention. Not to mention, most Americans have iPhones. As I grow older and experience more in life, my opinion on faith, imagination, and reason changes. The effects of life do that. The more lessons that we learn from life, the more we can apply them to ourselves. Strengthening ourselves through experiences is the most successful way of learning and growing. Our faith, imagination, and reason depend on us and our heart. With all three, we can get through our trials and come out stronger than before.
