The Art of Grit

(8 Minutes)

True faith isn’t about getting what you want — it’s about stepping into the unknown with open eyes and an open heart, even when nothing is guaranteed.

When people speak of faith, it’s often confused with belief — particularly the kind that clings, waits, and hopes for a specific result. It’s imagined as a kind of silent deal with the universe: if I trust hard enough, if I endure long enough, if I do all the right things, then what I want will arrive. In this version, faith is reduced to a strategy. A currency for exchange. A patient gamble on a future that behaves the way we want it to.

But what if that isn’t what faith is? What if it has nothing to do with results at all?

Real faith — the kind that doesn’t need to shout or convince — begins not with certainty but with openness. It is not the absence of fear but the presence of willingness. It’s the quiet bravery of saying yes to the unknown, not because the outcome is promised, but because the journey feels honest, necessary, even sacred. It asks nothing of the future, only something of us in the present.

In this sense, faith is deeply active. It doesn’t wait. It enters. It participates. It takes the step, not because the path is lit all the way to the end, but because the next step is here, and the act of taking it matters. There’s no pre-condition that things must work out a certain way. The presence is the point. The integrity of action becomes the reward.

Florence Nightingale is a striking example of this kind of faith. She stepped into the horror of war hospitals not because she had any guarantee of success, but because she couldn’t not act. Her belief wasn’t in a promised outcome; it was in the worthiness of doing what she could, with what she had, where she was. Her courage was born not from a certainty in results, but from a commitment to meaning. She chose to move forward anyway — that “anyway” being the essence of faith.

Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, also spoke of this in a deeply personal way. He described faith as a “leap” — not one of naive confidence, but of full consciousness. A leap not toward assurance, but into the vastness of the unknown, driven by something more powerful than proof: inner alignment. He understood that true faith wasn’t the opposite of doubt; it lived right alongside it, even welcomed it.

This isn’t to say that faith rejects hope. It simply doesn’t hinge on it. Faith can coexist with desire — it’s human to want things to go well. But it doesn’t bargain with the future. It doesn’t say, “I’ll keep going only if things unfold in my favor.” It says, “I’ll keep going because I am here, and I choose to show up.”

This kind of orientation frees us. When we stop measuring our faith by whether or not we get what we want, we discover that we are capable of far more honest and courageous engagement. We become less anxious about outcomes, more curious about process. Less addicted to control, more rooted in presence.

There’s a quiet dignity in this shift — the kind that lets us begin something without being owned by how it ends. That lets us love someone, create something, offer our effort, not because it guarantees us something in return, but because it feels like a true expression of who we are.

And that is what makes this kind of faith so radical. It asks us to participate in life without a script. To walk forward without an applause track. To trust the richness of the path, not the shine of the destination.

So maybe the real question isn’t: Will this work out?

Maybe it’s: Can I move forward with my eyes open, even if I don’t know where it leads?

And maybe the real meaning of faith has nothing to do with being right about the future — and everything to do with being present in the now, trusting not what comes after, but what arises within when we choose to begin.