This I Believe

Someone mentioned absurd beliefs tonight, which got me thinking about my own. So here they are:

My most absurd belief was, when I was a child, that the world is actually very, very small, maybe on the order of nothing being more than a 20 or 30 minute drive from anything else. But that all adults conspired to make children believe that it was much, much bigger than that, in the same way that they conspired to make children believe that there is a Santa Claus or a Tooth Fairy. Who knows why adults do anything they do? But certainly, if they take you on a "6 hour trip" to grandma's house, they are just driving in circles for all that time, to maintain the fiction. Which is why everything starts to look the same after a while, corn fields, brick store facades, houses after houses after houses, more corn fields, etc.

I'm not sure when I grew out of that belief, but I believed it for a while. And proselytized it to other kids.

My most absurd belief now?

These days... I don't know. My parents would probably point toward some of my "hippy inclinations":

I believe that western medicine is largely flawed, in that it largely works to treat symptoms without understanding underlying causes. And these days, with people in and out, without a long term relationship with a single physician, it often loses sight entirely of the whole person, or the complete medical history, which makes it even more into that treating symptoms without thought or understanding of underlying issues.

I believe that we over-medicate ourselves, and that we medicate for symptoms that we
mightn't have to if we were to understand and address some underlying causes.

I believe that American culture, right now, generally raises its children in exclusion to all other children, and very highly prizes material things and de-emphasizes community and interpersonal skills, and I don't believe that's a healthy way to raise a child. I believe that things like all our strollers facing out, away from the parent (versus European buggy-style strollers where the child lies down facing the parent) and our diapering and potty training systems are symptoms of this problem, and serve to exacerbate the problem.

I believe that if you have some amount of faith, you will find what you need. The universe, or god, perhaps, will provide. I've never worried that much about jobs, even when I haven't fond one for long periods of time, because one always seems to find me when I'm starting to need it. Whether I explicitly seek it out or not. All of my techie jobs found me; I never sought any of them out. My tango work has generally found me. My nannying work found me. I'm not living the high life, but I always have enough, I'm able to live my life on my terms (currently, I've been able to work entirely in a way that has allowed me to have my daughter at home with me for all of the first three years of her life), and when my resources start to seriously dwindle, something invariably comes along that allows me to address that and to start creating more resources.

"Absurd" is, of course, somewhat subjective.

What are your most absurd beliefs?