It is the last day of what has been an arduously long, long, long year, and I am up late pondering all that has transpired these last three hundred and sixty five days.
I am one for anniversaries; I usually remember any particular event which holds any significance to me during appropriate time intervals. And in this particular case the New Years roughly marks my acceptance of the fact that I was an atheist. November of last year was certainly the defining month, in which a lot of strong assumptions I had collapsed and I was slowly left to deal with the reality that a lot of the faith I had put into God was for naught, however, during that month and the following I was more or less in a state of mixed emotions and confusion and had little time to really reflect upon my altered perspectives.
During the latter part of Christmas however I began to accept that the beliefs I had held, the subconscious relationship I had with God, was no more, and no matter how I tried I could not retrieve it, no matter if I wanted to or not. Thus began a mental and physical transition in which I had to make sense of a world more or less new to me, and deal with many things I had taken for granted that were no longer so simple.
The one major change that has occurred since then in comparison with my Christian perspective concerns how I interact with feelings and reality. As an atheist I feel as if I have a much closer connection to the world because my actions can no longer be attributed to the 'Will of God.' Equally, I feel much more in touch with my own emotions, thoughts, and actions, because I no longer have a secondary thought process attempting to equate my behavior and thoughts with Christian ideology.
Moreover, I generally feel more in control of who I am as a person, and it is not necessarily a fantastic feeling, it simply feels ... right. I hope that now I can mean what I say and my act accordingly. Ideally, everything I do is simply me, there are no ulterior motives or two faced mindsets. Either way, it is a good feeling, not physically beneficial, but I seem to have a more wholesome attitude about life nowadays.
Monday, December 31, 2007
New Years Reflections
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3 comments:
I think you accurately sum up what most of us feel. It's a double edged sword of course. As we can take credit for the good that we do, we also must take the responsibility for all that we do, good and bad. There's no blaming Satan or any such nonsense but of course there's no crediting a god for curing you instead of the doctor who actually did it.
Exactly, well said.
The much more involved sense of responsibility I have has undoubtedly led me to many new choices in my life, and equally caused me to deeply regret some choices I had made earlier in my life.
Ah, but what a sharp double edged sword it is.
Yes, but at least you're wielding that sword rather than believing it's hanging over your head like the sword of Damocles by some deity who'll drop it on a whim. What an awful way that must be to go through life.
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