Finding Nemo

Faith is building on what you know is here, so you can reach what you know is there.  

       – Cullen Hightower

An old friend introduced me to the concept of sharks and Nemos. A Nemo is supposedly a good guy, a good catch if you may. A good find at this day and age when all men are expected to stray. The sharks, well, are the assholes of the earth. The typical find. The ones most women would wish will drop dead in an instant. I think it doesn’t take much to see that we’re swimming in a shark-infested ocean. But it’d take one big thing before we get to the bottom and find the Nemos waiting for us. Faith.

Looking back, it wasn’t really love that got me in to and out of a lot of things. I can always say I have managed to redeem myself through sacrifice. I guess I’ve always been too masochistic, always ready to keep myself from writhing in pain. It wasn’t endurance that got me safely through. It was the belief that after pain, relief would follow.

The only time that got things cloudy was when I leaned towards being cynical, when I doubted everything --- people, myself, and God. As I always liked to reason out, and as I’ve read somewhere, you cannot tell someone who’s been lied to that not all people are like that. True. When things start falling out and getting out of hand, doubt sets in and things, no matter how you try taking hold of them, would automatically ruin themselves altogether.

I think it happens because we need faith to put things together for us. We need to believe in things no matter how impossible they seem. We need to be like little kids who believe Santa drops by every Christmas Eve. We need to see things in a doubtless light.

When I felt betrayed by one of my closest friends, someone told me I have to know how to rebuild my trust in my friends again. I believed that. Now I appreciate the circle I am in more than I did before.

When I loved and lost one of the most important people in my life, I have always been told I’d eventually get up and learn to forgive, start to forget, and survive. It was a long stretch, but I am where I should be, where I want to be. And so, even if I didn’t want to admit it, I believed that. And things just kept on getting better for me.

I regained my faith in most things. And it made me the strong person that I am now. I may appear unhappy and unsatisfied in some aspects of my life, but I am in the process of embracing faith, as I know it. There isn’t anything too big or too little, too easy or too hard. If this is faith, I am there.

Going back to Nemo, I believed he was one of them, just because he said so. And it made like lightning striking when he suddenly turned out to be one of them sharks. I have given up believing he was one of them. But faith made me see, that just because he wasn’t set out as what he had initially showed himself to be, it doesn’t mean he won't change again, for the better.

Someday, the real Nemo in him will, in calm waters, come swimming closer. No matter how shark he is and wants to be. No matter how many fake Nemos are trying to influence him. I just have to keep believing. I just have to embrace it all.

If this is faith, then, again, I have it.