Faith

"Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible" 

((William James))

It is impossible to go through life without faith. I never thought much about this until recently, but faith comes in many forms and they don't all have to do with any kind of religion or god.

We as humans have faith in lots of things. There are basic things that we all trust to just be. When is the last time any of us questioned whether gravity would fail us or whether, after all these years of staying in its place, the earth would suddenly crash into the sun? Or whether the stars and moon would appear at night and the sun rise in the morning? Or when we sat in a chair wondered whether this time it would disappear unexpectedly from beneath us as soon as we lost sight of it? Or when we take a breath, whether the next second the oxygen will disappear from the air? These are things that I don't normally question. They are just things that always work the way I expect them to. I have faith that these things will continue to happen. 

We have a lot of faith in each other, however misplaced that faith may be. I mean, this might sound really pessimistic, but the fact is that anyone we meet could be a really bad person out to steal from or hurt us. But we interact with strangers all the time, and have faith that the person's intentions are good. Or when driving, it takes a lot of faith to trust that all those other metal boxes speeding down the road at 60 miles per hour won't spin out of control and crash into us. 

I don't know. I haven't got an profound conclusions to draw from this. I've just been thinking about how so much of life is based on faith, but we usually only consider it faith if it's in a religious context. But faith is an essential part of life.