Doubt is not the Boogeyman …

What 60 days in isolation made clear to me.

Doubt is not our friend. He enters through an unlocked door or a crack in the window and glides easily into our bedroom at night, whispering words of despair and defeat, until the nightmares arise within and our world turns dark and uncertain.

That pretty much sums up my understanding of Doubt, throughout the first 50 odd years of my life. It’s never something we need or want. It comes unbidden and stays longer than it should. It pokes at our self-esteem, questions our resolve and generally fucks with us until we are a bit wobbly at the knees and start reaching for the medicine cabinet. I have parried with the word all my life and have won some battles and lost many others. In the end, not being all the wiser for my efforts.

But then something changed. As the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months, I have had no choice but to be up close and personal with some of my inner demons; the time to sit and reflect on why they were there, as we all sat on the sofa watching reruns of the X-Files.

The Covid-19 quarantine is not the first time I have ever been alone; that is without a continuing flow of people and perspectives to compare myself to. To measure against, to see if I am still normal or rapidly devolving into someone else.

But for some reason, the intensity of this recent aloneness and the sheer number of hours in isolation and self-reflection have somehow created a distance between me and who I am. And the space created has provided me with a window into the evolution of Joe, over the past 30 plus years. The old expression: Can’t see the forest for the trees, generally means that we get slapped up against some aspects of our lives, to such a degree that we lose sight of them. Where they came from and how they affected who we are.

While sitting in my living room, imbibing a never-ending supply of negative reporting, doomsday predictions and the artful dodging of our President, I realized how the concept of Doubt entered our realm. And it is not a creepy other-worldly goblin that robs us of our dignity, sabotages our daily lives, while gleefully overseeing the dismantling of everything we’ve built over a lifetime.

Through my recent encounters with the existential — I have come to the conclusion that Doubt does not exist.

Not as a separate entity or state of mind that WE can push away.

Doubt as defined by Websters and many others is — uncertainty of mind, a lack of conviction. (And Obsolete) — apprehension or fear.

So, the question is, how does Doubt enter our lives? My answer is — it doesn’t, because it’s already inside us, waiting to be revealed.

Doubt exists to the degree that we do not trust, like, listen to or otherwise accept who we are, as we are. The greater the level of acceptance, the higher the level of faith and belief we have in ourselves, the more tenuous a hold Doubt will have over us.

When we allow tiredness, a general sense of fear, negative news and the usual compounding of life’s travails, to separate us from the certainty we inherently have in ourselves, then the more likely we’ll be wrestling with this thing called Doubt and believing it to be something that will always stalk us.

I disagree.

We have all experienced moments when we’ve been on top of the world. Where energy was plentiful, faith, unshakable and conviction in our ability to get things done, unstoppable. And then those moments were gone.

What happened?

I posit, the opposite of what is normally viewed as the reason for this “high” to be lost. That something entered our lives and derailed us for days, months or years. Something out there.

I posit instead, that we did in fact allow something to happen. A false statement to be accepted. A false opinion to be believed. A criticism to undermine our belief in ourselves. A hurtful intention to upset and cause us to look away. The loss of someone strong and loved to unsettle us enough so we wonder if we can go on.

Doubt doesn’t come knocking.

Doubt is us, ceasing to have 100% acceptance of who we are at any moment in time. If this is to be acknowledged, then the corollary would be — that the harder we work to restore 100% belief and acceptance in who we are, the more effective we will be in keeping Doubt out of our lives.

There is a presumptive position here — that whoever we are, is just fine. To move away from that invites questioning and uncertainty.

My writing is for shit today, I just don’t think I’m cut out for this.

I’m tired and angry at everything and everyone, and I don’t think this world is going to fix itself.

I believed once, then I grew up.

Doubt is a by-product of not being who we are and not believing 100% in ourselves. It appears when we let some small aspects of the outside world throw us off our game. The further we move away from 100%, the greater the hold Doubt will have over us.

This article is based on an observation, coalesced over the past few weeks, started decades ago. There are no quick fixes being offered up here — only one piece of advice.

Don’t worry about Doubt. As soon as we allow our self-confidence to be alloyed, our dreams to be diminished, or our sense of self to be undermined, it will be there, johnny-on-the-spot. So, do whatever you can to steel yourself from these assaults and the inevitable inclination to release this particular Kracken. The reason Doubt appears so quickly within us — is that it has such a short distance to travel. As quickly as it arrives, it can depart.

I found some quotes about this subject that I thought went nicely with the above and provided a good closing.

Thanks for stopping by and having a read.

I think it’s healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person. — Oscar Wilde

“Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.” Khalil Gibran

“Love is strongest when we learn to trust, in spite of the doubts.” Anonymous

“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” ― Vincent Willem van Gogh

Joe Luca is a published author and writer of children’s stories, short fiction, non-fiction articles, screenplays and poetry. Publications include Child’s Life, Children’s Playmate and others. There are some other articles below — have a read. And thank you for stopping by.