Doubt

We can never really be sure of anything in this life, except we will die one day, however we put enormous amounts of time, money and energy into trying to convince ourselves otherwise.

When I hear someone saying “I was just absolutely sure it was the right thing to do” I find myself wondering what the doubt is that they are too scared to let themselves know about, and that they are having to defend themselves against. What makes them so anxious they have to know?

I believe the distortion of the fundamentalist religions is to polarise doubt and faith. I think of faith as allowing space for our doubts. I know I need to have faith to function in the world I live in: Faith in the technologies I participate in every day; faith in the loyalty of my friends and family; faith that I will be understood and respected. Yet I know these carry no guarantees: My hard drive crashes and I lose all my family photographs; my wife leaves me for someone else; or my neighbour drives recklessly and kills my dog as I walk him down my road.

When I am a baby, too much doubt can destroy me because it does not allow for faith to develop. Being so helpless is impossible without Winnicott’s ‘good-enough mother’ modulating and containing my experience of doubt in ways that allow me to grow faith, and to extend this faith into the world through transitional experience. Then as an adult every time I engage with culture I re-enter this transitional space in ways that allow the freedom to play with doubt and faith, and renew my relationship with the space between them.