On human fragility and the role of religion
Sometimes I think about the fragility of the human condition.
We are held together precariously like a house of cards. By our friends and family, goodwill, achievements, memories and everything good and warm and fuzzy. In the worst of times, all it takes is a flick of an event, a gust of negative emotion, a wave of jealousy and envy — and everything comes crashing down. As if it were never anything more than a polaroid, shot in a fever dream.
And no matter how real it is, everything good that makes us and holds us up — the pain we feel at our inadequacy, our inability to prevent all of this, all of us, from falling apart is frightfully tangible.
It makes us question everything. All of this, all of “ourself” takes so much effort to build. Yet, a single incident that makes us aware of our insecurities pierces through it like a thorn — striking at our very heart. Is it even worth it? When even the highest house of cards eventually ends up falling, you can’t help but feel pessimistic about the human condition.
There is a profound sense of loneliness that comes with this. No one will see how many times you’re breaking and building yourself up. We show up, with our best smile and our most supportive self for all the duties that the world demands from us. We must be a good employee, a good son, a good friend, a good sibling, and so on.
Feels like the least hurtful thing to do in this situation is to shut out. Shut out your friends, your family, and the world in general. Because at least then you won’t have to deal with it anymore. Drown yourself in your work, in your routine, in your vices — anything that can help you forget.
The worst feeling in the world is knowing that these temporary solutions are exactly that - temporary. It gets worse if you’re willing to work for a permanent solution, but the factors that could change your situation are out of your control.
Maybe we really lost something when we decided that religion had no place in the modern, empirical, scientific world. In times like these when the storm clouds are raging all around us, faith gives us a moral lifeboat. It gives us something greater than ourselves to hold on to. To explain our ‘why?’. Something to help us get through and make sense of the greater, self-told story of our life.
Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how”. The weight of his words still holds true today. Maybe religion gave us our “why”.
When I say religion, I do not mean the tainted, modern meaning of the word and all the nefarious purposes it is used for. But maybe there was once a time when religion served as a guiding light through the terrifying, unpredictable seas of human existence.
And if such halcyon days did exist — I think it is worth asking ourselves whether we were too quick to discard many things in the name of ‘modernity’. Maybe our ancestral wisdom still has a thing or two to teach us.
It might not have a place in a scientifically driven world, but we’re not just scientists. We are human first. And humans are emotional, fragile, storytelling beings that need much more than science to get by.
So it goes.
