Have you ever wondered what faith is? I don't mean religion -- I mean faith as in conviction, a firm belief in something. Do you know what faith means?

Faith is not something to take lightly. All our lives are built on faith. Every human being lives on a modicum of faith, regardless of character.

Every day, we go about our business taking a lot on faith. We go places with the implicit belief that we will get there safely. We interact with other people with the carefree assumption that we will be heard and understood. We take care of our interests and our concerns with the confidence that everything will be okay. We retire to sleep at the day's end with the complete assurance that we will wake hale and hearty the next morning.

If you think about it, a lot can go wrong at any time. Accidents can happen. Things can be misunderstood. There are almost as many opportunities for our faith to be broken as there are for it to be verified.

The matter-of-fact consumption of life's moments without a second thought is an application of faith. Faith that should be protected and cultivated in the face of adversity.

Do you know why people become jaded? They become jaded because they lose their faith. Once again, these beliefs need not be the hallowed precepts of religious dedication. These beliefs are, quite often, related to the simple, yet critical, ideals of human experience. Friendship. Achievement. Love. A vast host of concepts and ideas that we hold dear, being people who care and hope.

It is important to watch yourself, making sure that you don't discard your faith out of hand. Life is fraught with as many disappointments as rewards, and it is dangerously easy to simply stop caring, to say "so what? something's going to go wrong anyway" to everything. To shrug your shoulders at the world, at other people, at principles - that is not anyone else's loss but your own.

Those of us born in the last three decades are prone to this. Our generation has taken disillusionment and skepticism as the hallmarks of our identity. And yet we cast about, complaining that the world has nothing to offer us, that the world has betrayed us with its cruelty and indifference. Something is amiss with this logic.

The weakness of our generation is that we take pride in losing faith and being cynical. "The better to protect ourselves from the mean people," some would say. But who are these mean people?

The answer: people who have lost their faith. People just like us. Do the math, and you'll notice that you're mean yourself, in some ways. It's not that you're a bad person - in fact, very few people are truly mean - it's just that you do your best to cope with bad experiences. And how do you cope? You become jaded. The cycle continues.

The happiest people in the world are also the ones who suffer the greatest disappointments. That's because they compensate. They savor the joy of hopes fulfilled, soothing the hurt of hopes let down. They have faith that, no matter what, everything will turn out okay. Why imprison yourself in pain by expecting disappointment, when you might have your hopes come true by maintaining them?

True faith is a matter of believing in something, no matter what. When faith like this is rewarded, the payback is glorious. Faith isn't about being stubborn or blind - it's about perseverance, and about confidence in your beliefs. Ultimately, it's about confidence in yourself, that what you hold dear is worth standing up for.

Having faith isn't about being naive. It's about being stronger than adversity.

[Published by Manila Times (11/17/99), Suite101.com (6/9/00), and Perspective (9/23/02)]