As you know, my BFF is having a little twat dropping in the fall.

I have little faith this is going to work out well for her and that feeling has increased little by little, as her due date looms closer.

I let a lot of things go unspoken while she waxes philosophical about being "zen" and having "faith" that this will be wonderful.

Her husband (they had a shotgun wedding last month) works a lot and is never home. Shortly after the wedding, hubby became impotent due to "stress" (their sex life was horrible to begin with though but I better not go there). She moved from AZ to Northern CA to be with him, so she has no friends or family close by. Her in-laws are almost an hour away. She has no friends or support system in her state. She is a high risk pregnancy so she quit her 6-year job to stay home until the baby is born. She is covered under COBRA for now but if it runs out before she finds a new job, she and the baby will be uninsured because her hubby is self-employed and has no health insurance whatsofucking ever. She also has a pre-existing condition (type 1 diabetes) and no insurance company in California will take her on independently due to that and the law allows that shit in her state.

Explain to me how in the sam hell you have "faith" that things are going to be good in a tough situation like that? I understand that people have it worse, but so what.

This shit is still bad!

Her situation has changed drastically from when she announced her pregnancy.

I do NOT stress these things in conversation with her and I rarely bring ANY of this up at all. I do not need to be the doom and gloom bitch of other people's lives. That is not my job. It's bad enough I spend so much time worrying about people if you ask me, but that's one of my "flaws", I guess.

What strikes me though is the idea of "faith", and just "hoping" everything fucked up will all somehow work out.

Any time we have a conversation, she stresses that she has faith everything will be ok. She isn't a religious person either...she just has this mysterious "faith" that she will have her happily ever after. The more she talks, the more I realize how much of a faithless person I am.

I have very little faith in ANYTHING. Especially in anything that involves other people.

People = historically unreliable, often unpredictable, generally illogical, riddled with issues, flawed and imperfect.

Yeah I'm not big on people. I have seen them in action and I know what they're capable of. I have come to the realization that having strong faith in imperfect people makes us prone to living in a perpetual state of disappointment. I think happiness and satisfaction should be more self-driven than anything.

This is not to say that I am TOTALLY faithless in everyone. I just don't have BLIND FAITH. The kind that keeps me from acknowledging certain inconvenient realities in life.

I look around and see a world full of relatively passive people having a lot of "hope" and "faith" in things, but not fully thinking through their decisions or looking to the experiences of others for insight.

I am starting to think that one of the most blaring differences between people who have kids and us childfree folks, is that instead of weighing EVERY ASPECT of having kids, they hinge their actions on faith and hopes and dreams, and all that kind of shit.

This concept of "faith", in my opinion usually prevents people from looking at things objectively and reasonably. Faith is often another way of putting blinders on and shielding oneself from reality.

As a matter of fact, the very definition of the word "faith" is sketchy and makes me want no part of it. The dictionary states that faith is the "firm belief in something for which there is no proof".

A firm belief in the unprovable...sounds sort of delusional in a way, doesn't it? I mean, if we're being honest, "faith" is the root of a lot of problems.

For instance, it creates religious intolerance. People have always and will always use faith as an excuse to be intolerant of others.

Also, isn't "faith and hope" part of what caused the mortgage crisis? People had "faith" that somehow they would be able to buy homes they couldn't afford. They had "faith" they'd be able to refinance before that ARM adjusted!

So am I crazy or is "faith" not the best thing to hinge important life choices on?

In addition, another part of me wonders, isn't "faith" sort of an arrogant, ignorant state of mind? When people ignore basic reasoning and "odds" if you will, in favor of "faith", isn't that a bit narcissistic? We live in a self-centered society after all. We often think that just because the majority of people fail at certain things, that we are somehow above those odds. We think "it's going to be different for us because we have hope and faith that it will!!!".

Facts (especially inconvenient ones), don't often derail people from doing what they WANT to do, no matter how misguided it is.

Should they? Yes, I think sometimes they should.

But, this being a "ME" oriented society, we all believe we are special.

Well obviously, we aren't. We're a nation full of un-special people who turn away from truths that don't fit our agendas. Their is an abundance of "faith" and a total lack of fucking LOGIC.

One quote I've always loved is: "Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives... by make-believe. ~W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938.

Basic interpretation: people have their heads up their asses and live in a constant state of denial to get by in life.

Subconsciously, can't we all see how true that is?

Don't we ALL have people in our lives hiding from truths and opting to "hope and have faith" instead of getting REAL?

I lose count of how many women I know who became mothers simply because they "hoped" it would turn out well. I'm talking about women who never outwardly enjoyed children but had faith the old adage "it's different when their your own", was true.

They learned that yes, it IS different when the children are your own. The difference being, you can't give them back when you're sick of them and all of your time, money, and freedom is now GONE!

Pretty damn different huh!

And I what I learned from that is, well I don't enjoy taking care of other's people's kids so consequently, I have no FAITH I would enjoy taking care of my own!

I have become so aware of my own flaws and shortcomings in the past few years, it's scary. So much so that I can't look at other people's lives and have faith that I'd overcome what they couldn't, or that I am somehow "too special" to make those same mistakes.

I can't look at every woman I know, who like me, is not proficient in anything "maternal" and think "but I'm sure I'd be different!"

I cannot look at bratty ass kids in the store and say to myself "I have faith my kids won't be like that!", and force myself to hope and believe that is true.

I can't look at every unhappily married woman I've ever known and say to myself "marriage will be different for me, I have FAITH!".

No....I think I am fully actualized in my own un-remarkability. I realize that my experience doing those things is not likely to be vastly different from the average person's experience. After all, the human experience is one of commonality. Most of our trials and tribulations (at least on a mental level) are universal, especially when we make similar life choices. I find it odd that so many people are operating on some level of willful blindness about these things, and would rather base life altering decisions on faith and "hope" their way through life.

Does anyone else think this is one of the big "disconnects" between us and them?