"Have you ever defended a way of life you were on the verge of exhausting? Have you ever given service to a creed you no longer utterly believed? Have you ever told a girl you loved her and felt the faint nausea of eroding conviction? I have…What is Doubt? Each of us is like a planet. There’s the crust, which seems eternal. We are confident of who we are. If you ask, we can readily describe our current sate. I know my answers to so many questions as do you. What was your father like? Do you believe in God? Who’s your best friend? What do you want? Your answers are your current topography, seemingly permanent, but deceptively so. Because under that face of easy response, there is another You. And this wordless Being moves just as the instant moves; it presses upward without explanation, fluid, wordless, until the resisting consciousness has no choice but to give way.
It is Doubt (so often experienced as a weakness) that changes things. When a man feels unsteady, when he falters, when hard-worn knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he’s on the verge of growth. The subtle or violent reconciliation of the other person and the inner core often seems at first like a mistake, like you’ve gone the wrong way and you’re lost. But this is just emotional longing for the familiar. Life happens when the tectonic power of your speechless soul breaks through the dead habits of your mind. Doubt is nothing less than an opportunity to reenter the Present."

John Patrick Shanley, Doubt

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