Sebastian Flyte Speaks to my Soul
“I suppose they try and make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?”
“Is it nonsense? I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensible to me.”
“But, my dear Sebastian, you can’t seriously believe it all.”
“Can’t I?”
“I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass.”
“Oh yes, I believe that. It’s a lovely idea.”
“But you can’t believe things because they’re a lovely idea.”
“But I do. That’s how I believe.”
–Charles and Sebastian, Brideshead Revisited
I intended to write a long essay about this passage, the thesis of which would be something like, “Faith is not about an external truth, but rather about an internal experience.” It would talk about Sebastian and how he has shaped my own beliefs, and my reaction against Charles. It would cover my relationship to absolute truth across the years, my search for it and my ultimate conclusion that truth is something we shape by our beliefs, not the thing that our beliefs should be shaped by.
But I did not write that essay. Instead, I spent all week over-caffeinated, watching old episodes of Drag Race, and doing my job very badly. My body knew what I needed better than I did, and it wouldn’t allow me to put pretty words on paper when it wanted me to rest. Instead of a well thought-out essay, which would have points and evidence and conclusions and witty remarks, I’m simply going to share a list of things I believe because they are lovely ideas.
There is a God. I don’t believe this for any of the reasons I used to; I don’t think the logical arguments hold up to scrutiny, certainly not anything C. S. Lewis said. I don’t believe this because I have experienced God or communicated with them in some way. I don’t believe this because it’s too scary not to. Instead, I believe this because, all else being equal, I would rather that something more than the human exists, than that we are all there is. Simply: I believe it because I want to, and I don’t really care if it is provably true or false. Belief in divinity is more literary than religious for me. I like to have some name for the spirit that comes over me when I write, and God is as good a name as any.
I am good. For too long I could not believe this, in no small part because of what Christianity taught me about sin and goodness. In no small part because I thought my queerness and my confusion and my three years of intractable mental illness all meant that I was bad in an unfixable way. When I say I am good I do not mean I do good things, or that the way I interact with others is good, though I certainly try to make it so. When I say I am good I mean that the constituent parts of me are good and they come together to make a good whole. I mean that when I do the wrong thing I am still good. I mean that nothing and no one can strip me of my goodness.
Beauty matters. A few times in my life–looking at ill relatives or tiny babies–I have been overcome with the reality that we are animals. Everything, I thought, was just a distraction from this fact and from the fact that we will all die. Culture and art, religion, history, philosophy, writing: all distractions, and all pointless. I had to go through this phase of nihilistic pessimism (“Nothing matters,” said in sorrow) to reach my current perspective of nihilistic optimism (“Nothing matters,” said in joy). And if nothing matters really, then the only thing that matters is what we decide does. And I decide that beauty matters. Art becomes significant because we endow it with significance, and the work of my life, to understand the world by writing about it, is important.
Misery is not eternity. This one is hard to believe, and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes, terrible things happen, and sometimes, the Supreme Court happens. It seems like everything is getting worse, forever, and always will. But this lovely idea that I believe in is, basically, the idea of hope. That despite everything, there is still a point in working towards something better. I see my friends live their lives unapologetically and joyously and I think, that. That is what I want the whole world to be: free of fear, free of injustice, free of suppression. I want it, and I can taste it sometimes, and it is the loveliest idea: that change is possible.
