Agnosticism is tantamount to saying: We can’t fathom the unknown, so we might as well not dwell on it. In catechism, I was taught that to believe in something you need to love it first, and to love it, you need to know it first. And also, faith, by definition, is believing without evidence. That’s why it is called a leap of faith. And I’m a writer, so I think our whole existence is a leap of faith. My ex is agnostic: When we were together, he once checked my Facebook. She said it was to see if she could believe in me. I said to her: Saint Thomas also put his finger in Jesus’ lance wound, because he didn’t believe he had resurrected, and later on, while praying, he was miraculously killed by a spear…
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Everyone is shocked by the tragedy in Poznan. In front of his former partner, he killed her fiancé and then himself. It was a crime of passion. But I’m a writer . I think it would have been better to find another passion . But it all makes sense linguistically, because words shape our worldview. For example, love in Spanish is amor, which comes from the Proto-Indo-European word amma, meaning mother. Because “in Spanish” love is literal. One of the first sentences we learn to write is: Mi mamá me ama, meaning: My mother loves me. On the other hand, the Polish word love, miłość, comes from the word mijać, in the sense of “to pass someone by; skipping them, not attacking them.” The disappointed in love simply took the word too literally.
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Some people think of the fact that we are a spec in the immensity of the universe and reach the conclusion that we’re insignificant in the cosmic scheme. But I’m a writer. I think such a conclusion is arrogant. Simply looking at a building, well planned by an architect, which will stand for centuries to come, I already compare it to myself, coming into existence by chance, and living for as long as my human health allows it. Or looking at a tree, breathing in and out, existing without a care in the world, with no excess of dopamine or cortisol, not seeking adventures to palliate the inanity of its existence nor stressing about whether it is cut to become a table; in such a moment I think we may have actually gone on the wrong evolutionary direction.
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