Don’t Give Up on Belief

This is Agnė, two years old. She’s running to the window shouting that there’s a plane in the sky. As far as I remember, planes rarely flew over our small town. I think I had only seen them in cartoons at that time. Still—I ran and yelled, believing one was really there. Thirty years have passed, and I’m sure that today, whoever lives in that room now sees at least one fly by every week. No one told that little Agnė that what she wanted to see wasn’t true. People only start talking you out of believing after a certain age.

The door closed and for the first time, I didn’t run after it. I sat on the edge of the bed, repeating a single word to myself like a mantra—“enough.” It had all gone wrong from the very first moments we met. And it never turned into anything better, even with time. I spun it around in my head, trying to find meaning in the meaningless. And the empty days passed. Weeks. And even after a few months, there was no room left for my belief.

It took just two days and two different people for me to realize that what one tried to frame as my worst flaw, the other saw as a virtue. One of them never came to watch the sun set into the ocean with me. The other, while I was digging little wish-notes into the sand at sunset, didn’t call it nonsense—but a part of me. And that part, he called beautiful. One said he loved me. The other didn’t lie—he simply loved me kindly, like a friend. One said I couldn’t have friends at all. The other, upon hearing that story, asked if I missed him. “A little,” I said—and instantly knew I was lying.

The tears ran like rain. For the first time in a long while. Out of fear. That I might lose the one thing that had carried me through life with such strength and certainty—that I never once doubted if I was worthy or if I could. That night, after all the convincing, I was terrified that someone might take away my belief.

In a short time, I was able to accept many “truths” about myself. That I was arrogant. Full of shit. That I judged and hated. That I tried to please people by appearing better than I really was. None of those words could wound me. “You can’t keep hiding behind your naivety, pretending people are good.” But they were. In the end, there were always more good ones in my life. “You can’t wrap everything in romance—life’s not like that,” he said, looking at me like I was mad. And for a second—I nearly believed him. A moment—that’s how long it took to realize that if I gave in, I might never find my way back.

“Enough,” I whispered, sitting at the edge of the bed, waiting for him to walk out without a word. Rarely had it happened before, but this time I was ready to give up everything. Everything I had in life. Except the one thing I lived for—what I believed in. And he left. For the first time, slamming the door. And for the first time, I stayed far from it. And it felt like I had been saved. That another lost battle had turned into a personal victory.

“You’re the most interesting astronaut,” my dear friend smiled at me once, and it felt good—knowing we believe in different things. “You’ll probably die trying,” he said. And even today, he fights for a justice that looks wrong to my eye. I fight for love. And I find it beautiful to see people who still believe. Even if what they believe in is different. It’s enough to know there’s another astronaut on this earth—someone most people might not believe in, but all it takes is one.

My most beloved person believed in the moon. When it rose, he’d bring flowers to the temple, sprinkle rice and petals on himself, and then quietly come sit at my door. His faith in the earth’s satellite felt absurd to me. But he was so pure, so without pretension, that without realizing it, I started following him—carrying flowers under that same changing sky. Today, I think of that always-shifting moon as a beautiful reminder. Of the most beautiful person, who made me want to be better. Not different, not to give something of myself up—but to become better. Because of love for another, we can accept what once felt foreign.

They say the years take away people’s hope. That with each orbit the earth makes around the sun, we lose pieces of what we once believed in without needing any proof. We grow bitter and cynical toward those whose dreams haven’t yet been crushed. Out of jealousy. It hurts to see in others what you’ve already lost in yourself. Strangely, you don’t even remember when exactly you stopped believing.

I sat for a long time watching a video of that little Agnė running to the window, trying to get everyone in the room to believe in what she imagined. I think, if I tried that hard now to prove what can’t be seen with the eye, I’d probably end up in a hospital. “That doesn’t happen anymore, it never did, and it never will”—I’ve heard that from too many lips, and too many times I’ve stayed silent, pretending to agree. Because things don’t happen anymore for those who stop believing they can.

It was a full moon when I went through all the old reminders I’d ever saved in my phone. My friend Wayan was probably lighting his last incense stick at the temple. Another friend was attending a protest for justice. It was quiet. And for the first time in a long while, peaceful. Nothing had changed. I glanced once more at little Agnė’s outstretched finger in that photo and heard a plane pass above Porto.

My God doesn’t speak through psalms, prayers, or rituals. We have a different language. And we understand each other just fine.

I took a deep breath. And after a long time, opened my phone. My hands started to tremble. Not from fear. From belief.