FAITH

Have you ever reached a point where you felt you had asked enough of God?

I have. 

It is a strange feeling that is difficult to explain unless you've lived through it. Not because your faith has disappeared, but because your prayers have.

For as long as I can remember, I have questioned God. As a child, I questioned his existence, his authority, his power, and the very idea that someone beyond our reach could govern this whole universe, which is so painfully unfair.

I consider that phase of my life a brief season of atheism. A phase many minds pass through.

"A phase of atheism that comes with an acknowledgment of rationality and goes with an acknowledgement of its limitation. 

I suppose with the realisation that the world offers too many wonderous mysteries for which science have no answer, choosing a faith is a better option."

-Riot, A Novel- Shashi Tharoor 

The words stayed with me. Not because it silenced my questions, but because it reminded me that not every unanswered question is a failure of thought. Some are simply reminders of how little we truly know.

Around the same time, I encountered Pascal's famous argument that

"Believing in God, in many ways, the most rational wager. If God exists, you have everything to gain. If he doesn't you have lost nothing." 

Since then, faith did not feel like the opposite of reason. It felt like an acknowledgment of reason's limit.

With time and pain, God stopped being an abstract idea and became the only presence before whom I could cry without explaining myself. The only place where silence felt like a proper conversation. That doesn't mean I became a fanatic. I never have been. My faith has never belonged to rituals alone, nor to the certainty that my religion possesses every answer. Instead I found myself believing in the power spoken of by Swami Vivekananda, in the divine love sung by Kabir, and in the oneness preached by Guru Nanak. That was the faith I chose. Not blind belief, not unquestioning obedience, but trust in something larger than myself.

For years, the faith quietly accompanied me. It gave me discipline, comfort, and perhaps even made me a good daughter. It gave me someone to speak to on nights when my own thoughts became unbearable.

Then life demanded another choice. Some pain arrived that could no longer be ignored. Some desires grew so deeply rooted within me that they occupied every waking thought of mine.

Once again, i stood before two roads.

One, which led towards abandoning the idea of a higher power altogether. Or the other, which asked me to surrender completely. I questioned once again. Only this time, the questions were answered by strangers, teachers, experiences, and perspectives that slowly reshaped the I understood belief.

One very small instance was when, during my very first interview experience (vice captain position) in school, one of the teachers on the panel asked me my opinion on Wokeism. I knew the meaning, maybe the answer that they were looking for. I don't know why, but I spoke about religious fanaticism. 

Maybe because that's what I read earlier in the morning, or something else. I spoke about the danger of mistaking devotion for intolerance and why faith never demands hatred. I still think that I did great in that interview (i never became the vice captain).

But that one experience gave me something far more valuable. It revealed my own beliefs to me, and since then they have never really changed.

Life eventually reaches a point where your wishes are no longer about toys, grades, or small victories. You begin asking for things that cannot be bought. Something that requires your hard work, something that keeps you awake at night, repeated in anxious mornings, carried into temples crowded with strangers who have no idea why your eyes are filled with tears. You fast, you pray, you recite every shloka right, with hope. Not because you know someone is listening, but because you desperately want someone to be.

And then one day, those prayers are answered. The wish you carried for months, perhaps years, finally arrives. you stand there, unable to move, unable to speak You thank God, you thank fate, and you thank every unseen force and every blessing that might have carried your voice where your own strength could not.

People congratulate you, admire your persistence; some call it manifestation, some call it luck, and some destiny. But deep inside, you know it was far more than words can explain.

Today, it has been a year since that prayer found its answer. Looking back, it remains one of the most humbling experiences of my life. Not because I received everything I wanted, but because I learned what it means to wait, to hope, and to finally let gratitude become louder than desire.

Now,

When i stand before that same God, I have nothing left to ask for. Even when my mother gently reminds me to make a wish, my mind falls silent and asks for the cliches, the betterment of family, friends, mentors, and society.

I pray, I fold my hands, and I perform every ritual with the same sincerity. Yet no new desires rise within me. There is only stillness (as of now).

Sometimes I wonder whether I exhausted my share of prayers when that one wish was granted. I wonder whether asking for more would make me ungrateful, as though receiving one miracle has taught me enough.

I could be wrong; maybe god doesn't count our prayers; perhaps only I did.

I still visit temples and still bow my head.

But my faith today is quieter than it once was.

(Thoughts and experiences are personal and have no sentiments to hurt anyone's beliefs.) 

(june-july2025)

(realisation-june 2026)