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April 9, 2020,
We all want to believe in something. Even someone.
Make that, we must believe. To help us get through this sometimes crazy and confusing life.
Belief systems can make us feel secure and help us make sense of a world that often doesn’t make any sense at all.
Often our belief systems come from our parents, community, religion or country that we are raised in.
As mental and emotional structures, they influence the way we perceive and react to the world around us and the values we accept or reject. As social structures, they provide a supporting network and a deep sense of belonging.
At bravewell.org, a health and wellness site based upon integrative medicine, they explain, “Beliefs can be powerful forces that affect our health and capacity to heal. Whether personal or cultural, they influence us in one of two ways–they modify our behavior or they stimulate physiological changes in our endocrine or immune systems.”
The question we have asked ourselves since previously it has strongly happened to us.
What happens when your belief system is completely destroyed?
“One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.”… Joan of Arc
We have a friend in our circle who we will call Beth who was raised in a strongly religious household and firmly believed in the teachings of her religion.
Then through a series of events, in her family and community where there was strong betrayal, she just didn’t believe any more.
The legendary singing group Journey encourages to “Don’t stop believin’ Hold on to that feeling”.
Beth found that extremely hard to do. She did stop believing.
Even if she tried to fake it. Leaving her religion at first was difficult. Moving away from her community more so.
The challenge was after she left and met a whole different community of people, she didn’t know what to believe in anymore.
So often in a situation like that, once the belief system is destroyed, as we get older and look back, sadly many things in retrospect were not remotely what we thought.
One television series that greatly epitomized that feeling was Cold Case.
Cold Case is an American police procedural television series which ran on CBS from September 28, 2003 to May 2, 2010. The series revolved around a fictionalized Philadelphia Police Department division that specializes in investigating cold cases.
The show is set in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and follows Detective Lilly Rush (Kathryn Morris), a homicide detective with the Philadelphia Police Department, who specializes in “cold cases”, or investigations which are no longer being actively pursued by the department.
Some of the saddest episodes were when someone, now a middle aged adult, were forced to look back into their past and found out that a parent or loved one was not who they remotely thought they were and it shatters their world.
In film, a movie that enthralled and soon deeply saddened us, was Revolutionary Road.
Revolutionary Road is a 2008 romantic drama film directed by Sam Mendes.
The performances of DiCaprio and Winslet earned them a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama nomination and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, respectively, and the film was nominated for a further three Golden Globes, four BAFTAs and three Academy Awards, including a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Michael Shannon.
All awards much deservedly so.
Here is the storyline.
In 1948, Frank Wheeler (DiCaprio) meets April (Winslet) at a party. He is a longshoreman, hoping to be a cashier; she wants to be an actress. Frank later secures a sales position with Knox Machines, for which his father worked for 20 years, and he and April marry. The Wheelers move to 115 Revolutionary Road in suburban Connecticut when April becomes pregnant.
To their friends, the Wheelers are the perfect couple, but their relationship is troubled.
April fails to make a career out of acting, while Frank hates the tedium of his work.
April wants new scenery and a chance to support the family so Frank can find his passion, so she suggests that they move to Paris to start a new life away from the “hopeless emptiness” of their repetitive lifestyle. Frank balks at the idea at first, but becomes convinced. Over the next several weeks, the Wheelers tell their various friends about their plans to live in Paris.
April in particular begins to believe in their dream and the hope of a new and exciting life in one of the most romantic countries in the world.
At some point, April is betrayed by adultery and even worse, the decimation of the belief in her new life.
How it unfolds is one of the saddest and most well done passages that we have seen on film.
Once your belief system is destroyed, where do you go from there?
Since we have been in that situation more than once with one dream completely destroyed after 20 years of intensely believing, it took a while but we had to create a new belief system based upon the dreams that we can control.
Check that.
Mostly in control. In this life, you are never completely in control.
One thing that we have found consistent in the flaming out of dreams is that the important dream of the person involved is controlled by and based upon the behavior of others.
That consistently is a flawed dream model. People, religions, community and even countries are flawed. They will disappoint.
Often they are very selfish but extremely talented at hiding it.
“You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.”… Harry S Truman
Belief in self and the dreams and goals that you can control appears to be a much more realistic and satisfying belief system.
On a personal level, real change and new strong belief systems can happen only when you recognize that it’s your responsibility to feel, think and act differently.
You become the master of your fate.
As you might suspect, this will tend to happen as you get older and gain more experience.
The key here is to learn from the past and what the particular elements of belief destruction were and why it failed you the first time.
Once you begin to improve who you are through study, meditation, physical fitness, an improved natural diet and securing meaningful, friendships based upon your new important principles, you just might be pleasantly surprised that the new belief system that you develop will become your most important traveling companion for the rest of your life, who rarely disappoints.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Case
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Road_(film)
http://www.bravewell.org/integrative_medicine/philosophical_foundation/beliefs_and_culture/
https://www.coe.int/en/web/compass/religion-and-belief
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-blame/201303/change-your-beliefs-change-your-life
https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/belief-quotes
https://fciwomenswrestling.com/
https://www.fcielitecompetitor.com/
