Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Is the glass half empty or half full?
Half full focuses on what’s there to work with. Half empty focuses on the depletion of resources. Maybe there’s even worry about whether what’s left will be enough.
Maybe that’s a total lack of faith. More likely, it’s faith in not having enough. When the glass looks half empty, the belief is that not enough is the dominant force.
But what is faith anyway? It’s trust, isn’t it? And if we’ve got trust problems, we’ve got faith problems. Sometime, somewhere, we lived a story where the guys in the white hats didn’t win the shoot out.
So what now?
You know the story about the boy and his grandfather and the wolves? The one where Grandfather tells his grandson that we all have two wolves inside us: one that wants to devour us and one that wants to help us live. Can you hear Grandson’s breathless question, “but which one will win?” And Grandfather’s calm answer, “the one you feed.”
We all have the capacity for faith in lack and faith in abundance, faith in success and faith in failure. You may have to search a bit for the wolf you haven’t been feeding. S/he’s still around: you may have starved it into a corner, but you can’t kill it off.
So next time you’re feeding the worry wolf, the no-can-do wolf, remind yourself that your trust is misplaced. Throw a few crumbs to the wolf who supports your hopes and dreams.