I do not believe in a strict religious doctrine. I am flexible when it comes to religious beliefs. Every day I discover something that adds to, and makes me reconsider my beliefs.
When I was a little kid, my parents were never very religious. I never even thought about why I was here, or if there was something like a “god”. I remember that the first time that I ever started thinking about things like that was when I was 8 years old. It was then that that I really began to wonder if there was really a god, so I came up with a test, like many kids before me. I would pray to god for something, anything, to happen that could make me believe in him, good or bad. If nothing amazing happened, then I wouldn’t believe, or vice versa. It seemed foolproof to my 8 year old self, and everything went as planned: I did the prayer, and waited. To this day, nothing that would truly have made me believe in a god has happened, so I have concluded that there may or may not be a god. Perhaps I am hard to amaze, or perhaps the world is already so amazing that a god is not necessary. There is one other amazing thing that I still think of since my “test”. It is the fact that billions of people believe in something that they cannot prove exists, that is, that life has a purpose and meaning set forth by a god.
I draw an important part of my spiritual beliefs from humanism, existentialism, and absurdism. While this may seem an unlikely combination, I will pull them together into a personal menagerie of my philosophy. As a major part of my Humanistic values, I believe that every person has an inherent worth and dignity, and that every person, once born, has a right to live their life. From my existential ideals I believe that there is no plan or blueprint for life, we are put here on this planet, and that we determine the form and meaning that our lives will take. I believe that it is everyone’s mission to create a meaning for his or her own life. From the absurdists, I agree that it is possible that there may be meaning to life, but we may never understand it. The problem in this case is that we lack the capacity to understand what the greater meaning is, even though it may exist.
I can say that I am awed by life, of being completely free and making my own decisions, not knowing exactly what is going to happen. But I have accepted that this is the way that life is, and I have decided that I should not let this stop me from creating meaning for myself. It is my personal belief that the very beauty that one can create and experience in life is the meaning to life. This I believe.