The Price of Doubt

There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a sword that kills.BuddhaDoubt is a poison that makes quiet work of destruction. It is like putting one drop of oily black ink into a glass of pure water. One whole glass of clear water, and one tiny drop of ink. Although by ratio the water has the ink beat many times over… it may as well be a glass of ink because the water that holds that drop has been contaminated. I have always envisioned doubt to be just that, a tiny bead of inky blackness. Not loud, and not even terribly active, but oh is it powerful when it just sits there in its inky blackness. One drop….in a marriage, a friendship, anywhere at all in the pristine water of our lives and whatever was clear before becomes tainted.Is there a remedy? Well, I am not sure there is a cure for doubt, but there are certainly management techniques. (And we would not really want doubt ‘cured’- it is sometimes what leads us to the truth.)My version of doubt management 101 is as follows; When doubt knocks at the door there are two things we can do. We can send it on its way by turning it away completely, or we can invite it in and introduce it to those around us.Send it or own it.Like anything else that is inky black- if we bring doubt into the light, we can manage it, instead of it managing us. We can live with doubt if we keep it in the light- because doubt can do one of only two things when it is in the light- it can disappear because it has no merit, or it can grow into truth and with that comes a natural end.The only way that doubt wins is when we stay there day after day with that big glass of water that holds that tiny drop of ink.