the 30-days meme: day nine
Your beliefs
Oh, come on, now. Before I've even finished my first cup of coffee?
When I was a little kid, I knew more about the Green and Roman pantheons than I did about Christianity. I wanted to believe in all those gods and goddesses, mortal fears and strengths personified, with all their crazy adventures and fascinating mistakes. I had all these old textbooks from my stepgrandmother, who taught me to read very young, and all the mythology sections were seriously pored over.
You couldn't convince me the Bible had anything on those stories. And sure enough, when my dad made me go to church with him and my stepmother for a while, I hated it. I remember pitching fits in the house and then sulking through Sunday school. Arts and crafts was OK. Being asked condescending questions about stories? Less so.
This is the long version of saying the same thing I say in all these entries: It's all stories. You pick the ones that resonate with you, that explain your world. Do I believe in a god? I'm pretty sure the answer to this is no. Do I believe in living the best life I can for reasons that have a lot to do with the morality I learned from stories? Yes.
But the best way to answer this question, it suddenly occurs to me, is right in front of me.
"I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe."
"Really?"
"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen-I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousand of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath.
- from American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Day 01 - Introduce yourself
Day 02 - Your first love
Day 03 - Your parents
Day 04 - Your music
Day 05 - Your definition of love
Day 06 - Your mode of transportation
Day 07 - Your best friend
Day 08 - A precious item
Day 09 - Your beliefs
Day 10 - What you wore today
Day 11 - Your siblings
Day 12 - What’s in your bag
Day 13 - Your day
Day 14 - Where you live
Day 15 - Your childhood
Day 16 - Your first kiss
Day 17 - Your favorite memory
Day 18 - Your favorite birthday
Day 19 - Something you regret
Day 20 - Your morning routine
Day 21 - Your job and/or schooling
Day 22 - Something that upsets you
Day 23 - Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 - Something that makes you cry
Day 25 - Your sleeping habits
Day 26 - Your fears
Day 27 - Your favorite place
Day 28 - Something that you miss
Day 29 - Your favorite foods/drinks
Day 30 - Your aspirations