Doubt
I often wonder how much of what we call doubt is actually a lack of trust in life.
We make plans, imagine possibilities and try to anticipate what lies ahead. We want to know where our choices will lead us, what tomorrow might bring and whether the ground beneath our feet will remain steady. We try to create a sense of certainty around a future that, by its very nature, cannot be known.
And yet, life never truly belongs to our plans. No matter how carefully we arrange things, there is always something beyond our ability to foresee or control. Perhaps we hold on so tightly because some part of us finds it difficult to simply let life unfold.
This may be where doubt begins to take root. Not necessarily in the things we are capable of doing, but in our ability to trust what happens when we let go of knowing. We may have countless possibilities before us, yet find it difficult to move towards them without first knowing where they will lead. We hesitate, question ourselves and look for reassurance. Even when something within us wants to move forward, another part seems unable to surrender to the unknown.
But I wonder whether trust in life is something we learn long before we are able to understand what trust means.
Our first experience of life comes through another human being. Before we can form memories, understand words or make sense of the world, we are already experiencing it through touch, presence, warmth and the emotional availability of the person caring for us. Through these first encounters, something begins to take shape within us. A feeling of safety, of being held, of being able to simply exist without having to anticipate what comes next.
Our mother's relationship with life, with herself and with the world around her may become part of this first experience. If she herself has not known that inner sense of safety, if she has struggled to feel at ease with life, perhaps there was something she could not fully pass on to us. Not because she did not love us, but because some experiences are difficult to offer when they have never truly been our own.
What we encounter in those earliest moments may become woven into our unconscious long before we have the words to recognise it. And perhaps, years later, we find ourselves living from a place we do not entirely understand. We may struggle to trust our own feelings, question the things we desire or feel the need to hold on tightly to the direction our lives are taking.
Looking back at this, I begin to understand that some of my doubts may have roots much deeper than the questions I ask myself today. Perhaps they are not always telling me that I am incapable, or that something I wish for is beyond my reach. Perhaps they reveal how difficult it can be to feel at ease with life when we cannot know what it will bring.
But understanding where something began does not mean we have to remain there.
Today, we are no longer only the children shaped by our earliest experiences. We are also the adults who can begin to build a different relationship with life. Not by forcing ourselves to believe that everything will turn out well, or by trying to replace every uncertain thought with a positive one. But by slowly getting to know the life within us again. By learning to listen to ourselves, to recognise what feels true and to allow ourselves to experience what comes without needing to have every outcome figured out.
Perhaps trusting life means reaching a place where we no longer need to know how everything will unfold before we allow ourselves to live. Where we can meet what comes with openness, even when it is different from what we imagined. Where we do not have to hold the future so tightly because our connection with life is no longer dependent on how predictable it feels.
I do not think this kind of trust is something we simply decide to have. Perhaps it is a relationship we slowly develop, one experience at a time.
And maybe this is where a new beginning becomes possible. Not in knowing how to fly without ever falling, but in becoming willing to befriend life again — the life within us and the life unfolding all around us.
To feel it, to respect it, to move with it.
And perhaps, little by little, to trust it enough to let ourselves fly.
Where Do We Fall When We Try to Fly?