Belief is memory in motion.
In my mind, there are tiny, bead-like elements of opinion—minute seeds of faith and doubt that compose the hidden skeleton of identity. They slipped in without announcement and melted over years of living, grief, imitation, and defiance. Over time, they fused into an intricate, invisible lattice of thoughts, hardened into an architecture of assumptions and certainties. Some sparkle with a strange, ageless light; others lie neglected, exiled to the dim outskirts of awareness, yet still shape the way I move through my world. It is, usually, a different world than the one you would notice.
When I must justify an action or intention—a desire or a hesitation—I reach for these beads and begin to string them. A garland forms, fragile yet insistent, and it wraps around me, whispering, “This is who you are; this is why you do what you do.” But not every bead can bear daylight. Some appear corroded, their surfaces flaking with old fear, old imitation, old obedience. Their tarnish confronts me with uncomfortable truths. So I take up a brush fashioned from my present understanding of life and start to paint over it. At times, I choose the bright hues of trendy ideas; at other times, I lean toward the subdued tones of introspection. In this private ritual, I enter a wordless dance with myself—the self that was, the self that is becoming—and I paint until the colors match the desire of the moment.
As time passes, these ideas feel less like beads and more like fat cells, swelling beneath the skin of my consciousness. They cling to the excess: borrowed opinions, hand-me-down creeds, ill-fitting certainties I once adopted in the name of prudence or belonging. Layer by layer, they thicken until the weight of carrying them grows almost unbearable. To lighten myself, I wield dissent and experience as chisels, carving and scraping and paring away the surplus until something leaner, more honest of myself, begins to emerge—trembling but unmistakably alive.
Sometimes the work of refining my thinking requires something more extreme than careful trimming. Instead of just chipping away at the edges, I break down these accumulated beliefs completely—I grind them into smaller pieces, blur their once-sharp boundaries, and let them soften and blend until what I started with becomes impossible to recognize. What was once a collection of firm, distinct ideas transforms into something more like a skull filled with shimmering mush—a soft, fluid substance that no longer claims to be permanent or complete.
In this state of formlessness, I experience two powerful and contradictory feelings at once. There is terror in watching what once felt solid and dependable melt away, in losing the firm ground I thought I was standing on. Alongside that fear comes an unexpected freedom: the liberating realization that I no longer have to pretend those rigid beliefs are permanent. The solidity I once clung to was never the goal—it was just a temporary resting place, and letting it dissolve opens up space for something new and more authentic to take shape.
Perhaps belief is not merely what inhabits me; it is what I consent to keep. What I believe is what I choose to keep choosing, and the choosing never ends. My urges—that quiet, stubborn “I want to see differently now”—evolve as my life unfolds, as each day scuffs the surface of the previous day’s certainties. I move through the world with my heart as a small, persistent workshop, always ready to paint, reshape, disassemble, and reassemble the minute ‘me’ within. It is an endless revision, an intimate labor of unmaking and remaking: a strange, radiant bliss not of knowing, but of becoming—not of peace, but of the fierce, beautiful motion that sets me free from the weight of arrival and keeps me alive in the act of becoming.
Making of:
The line “Belief is memory in motion” functions as a quiet spine: it holds together the themes of inheritance, revision, and the ongoing choice of what to keep, rather than treating belief as a fixed destination.
Started from noticing how quickly inner justifications appear whenever I defend a feeling or decision, and wondering what those invisible “reasons” actually look like inside.
The first image was beads: small, touchable units of opinion that could be arranged, worshipped, or hidden, which led to the strand/garland motif of self-explanation.
Letting the metaphors keep shifting—beads, paint, fat cells, then a skull of shimmering mush—was a way to dramatize how beliefs move from precise and pretty to heavy, then finally to something formless when deeply questioned.
Long, winding sentences mimic the mental loops of self-justification; moments of shorter, plainer phrasing arrive where a clearer self-understanding briefly breaks through.