Prayer? The suggestive pathways to finding existential and practical answers through wishing are really just a form of it.
"Hello, Anyone out there..."
Why do people pray? And I’m not just talking about religious people, e.g. Christians, Muslims, either. The whole ensemble of humanity, to a lesser degree, “prays” about something and, passively, to someone or something. I mean, when dire straits come upon an individual who’s not religious at all, they almost have an intuitive hunch to close their eyes and ask for some kind of relief, solution, or just an answer. This can also be called wishing…
Further expanding on that last item, what is wishing? Here’s what Grok (3) says:
"Wishing" generally refers to the act of desiring or hoping for something to happen or be true, often without any guarantee that it will come to pass. It’s an expression of a want or longing, typically tied to imagination or emotion rather than action or certainty. For example, you might wish for good weather tomorrow or for a dream job to land in your lap. It’s a concept rooted in human experience, often showing up in storytelling, like wishing on a star, or in everyday phrases like "I wish you’d stop asking me obvious questions."
Deconstructing this we can find the action (act of desiring or hoping), the outcome (a positive result), and also to whom or what (star). I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot like praying. Again, why the insistence on this whole notion of “wishing” for something to happen as opposed to just accepting reality for what it is and compartmentalizing phenomena as it comes as just, well, “it is, what it is.”
There has to be some primitive, innate quality in our nature that begs for this longing, this hopeful gaze unto the stars at night or clouds during the day aspiring for nature to bend to our will, or at least be in alignment with it. What is it though? What is this urge to abandon so-called “reason,” science as a whole really, and send an internal message to an unknown email address in hopes (there’s that wishing again) that maybe, just maybe “someone” will respond and your circumstances change.
I have persevered in my life to achieve great strides in multiple arenas. Including also, hellacious times where “best life now” mantras sounded like a foreign language and the people chanting them looked antagonizing. And why am I inserting this here? In the interest of my now burgeoning season of writing, I will address many topics that will include my faith, in hopes that someone with a similar pragmatic approach to life can connect the dots (homage to Steve Jobs' Stanford graduation speech) and begin to see a pattern emerge from this consortium of energy I'll be exerting. I try not to get too metaphysical about things unless I have to make a point or connect concepts together, e.g. spiritual warfare, Jungian thought, etc. Sometimes “intuitive thinkers” (Meyers Briggs) such as myself, not just prolific writers, find themselves neck deep in the “weeds”, going off on tangential abstracts. However, my prudence will alarm me if we’re diverging into un-useful, irrelevant, or unnecessary territories.
All that to say that I lived my first half—roaring 20’s— of my life without much thought to prayer, let alone God, and the results were abysmal. Round 2 began in my 30’s (more details later) and prayer became routine, and results were MUCH better. Now, in my 40s, prayer is not only essential (involving a close relationship with Him), but an inextricable component of my being/life. And I mean this quite literally, without this connection with prayer and God, my whole existence is just a mirage of poorly scripted episodes with an unpromising final season around the corner.
The change: one string of agonizing prayers (wishes) hoping that life was better and my true purpose revealed. This was the catalyst that ignited a paradigm shift in practically every phase of my life.
At my lowest, and this is true for even atheists or those objectively against God, I cried out hoping that my pain was not trivial and my instinctive assumptions that someone was listening was not in vain. I was clear-minded, not at all inebriated in any way, sober as can be for the reason of asserting that I wasn’t cloudy in the head nor did I have communications with some apparition. And that inkling within that compelled me to chase after the celestial realm was met with the very reality that many people discover for themselves.
That the immense uncertainty of our existence, even with all the scientific and technological breakthroughs, is constantly developing in us an inner dialogue that continuously pines for answers well beyond the scope of human knowledge and capacity. After 6,000 years, we’re still debating and clashing with each other on the root cause of the whole system: the big bang (or some version of it) or God. This unshakeable urge to find out, to explore, and to seek answers is unrelenting and irresistible.
WE MUST KNOW…
And when there’s not a suitable answer, refusing to accept another plausible “maybe,” what are we left with?
Nothing.
If you accept “nothing,” that is.
But, like most of us, when we’re stuck in a rut, unable to define the best route to safety, success, or just a path anywhere beyond our miserableness, we essentially pray. Yep, a bona-fide Hail Mary to the cosmos for a way out. Indeed, we actually pray… Maybe not with folded hands, closed eyes, or, like my Catholic friends, genuflecting every time they face the cross hanging from the apse in the sanctuary, but, with or without any extra bodily movement, we utter a quiet “hello, anyone, please help” out to the universe.
That is prayer. That is hardwired in all of us. That is God.
“Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:12-13 KJV
Try it. See what happens.
Onward