on sticking with it - by Ava - bookbear express

I’ve been thinking about the phenomenon I call “loss of faith.” You start something new, you’re super excited, and then one day—let’s say six months in—you wake up and you’re like, eh, I’m really not feeling this. This is little similar to the phenomenon known as “The Dip,” but I think calling it a dip implies that it’s short and temporary in a way that isn’t always true. It’s normal to go through periods of disenchantment and re-enchantment. Sometimes those periods can last a long time—months or years. Going back to the faith analogy, it’s like a religious conversion: I’m reading Emmanuel Carrere’s The Kingdom right now and there’s a section about how when you first convert you feel this rapturous certainty that God is with you. Then time passes and it fades. Maybe it’ll come back, but there’s at least some period of time you spend tormented with doubt, feeling all alone. Mother Teresa felt it—in the phase of her life before she started working in Calcutta, she heard Jesus’ voice: he

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• Andrew Tam