What is the worth of your disbelief?

The topic of this subject-matter came to me, in my bedroom; as I tried to shut my eyes for the night in far-away North-America.

Why did I use the phrase, ‘far-away North-America’?

I’d tell you why. When I was much younger, I refused to believe that there was anything out there. I refused to believe that there was more than the country I was born into. I refused to believe there was more than Nigeria that existed in the world.

The family I was born into wasn’t the type that would do expensive things out of sheer interest, curiosity or relaxation. Things like traveling around, taking boat-cruises, eating at random expensive restaurants, using the best gadgets, etc., were not things that were tandem to our regular lifestyle (don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t born poor. I was actually born to a ‘well-to-do family’ – In the Nigerian sense of the phrase). My tribe (Nigerian tribe) is ‘IGBO’, and if you ask questions about the Igbo people, you would get to find out that the stereotype surrounding us is that we are ‘tight’ with money. In-other words, we don’t spend, unless it is necessary to spend, haha! And that was the exact depiction of the sort of family I was born into (I am a little different, anyways). Hence, given that during the earlier periods of my life, there was no ‘specific’ (or in my father’s usual words, ‘cogent’) reason for my siblings and I to leave the country, we never did.

I attended expensive schools for most of my life, and because of that, I had friends from rich backgrounds. They mostly had tales about places they had been to, cultures they had experienced and sites they had explored. I, however, would listen, but with a pinch of salt. I had never seen any of those places, I had never experienced any of those things, hence, I had doubts of their existence. Haha! I know this is ludicrous, especially considering that I was educated and all, but that’s the truth. I guess what made it even more ridiculous was that I read newspapers and watched shows with settings abroad (‘so-called abroad settings’ – in my mind). There was so much proof that there was life, cultures and existences beyond my home country, but I didn’t care to believe. So long as I had never seen any of these places, personally, they didn’t exist.

That brings us to the topic of today. What is the worth of your disbelief? The fact that I refused to believe that there was anything out there, didn’t stop the things from existing. I didn’t believe there was life outside my country, but those who lived outside continued living. I didn’t believe there was the United States, I didn’t believe there was Canada, I didn’t believe there was Germany, I didn’t believe there was the United Kingdom, etc., but guess what? that didn’t stop them from being actual countries that existed. What was my disbelief worth, then?

Most of us are this exact way with our spirituality. The world, the atmosphere, the beauty, the biology, the physics, the chemistry, etc., the intricacies that surround all these things, their beautiful complexities, and completely thought-about existences, all suggest to us that there is more than we know, there is something greater, there is something bigger, there is something more powerful. There is God. You don’t believe? Well, then like in my case, what is the worth of your disbelief? What does it stop? You may not have had a first-hand experience that you are aware of, but people around you do, but like a much younger me, would you only wait till you see with your physical eyes, before you believe?

Let’s think on this.