A Truth as Brazen as a Lie

Just as there are mathematicians who buy lottery tickets in the hope that they might win, and devout scientists who believe in God or in religion, people can believe in things for which there is no objective evidence, or, more plainly, in things that are not true and that they know are not true.

The point is that whether something is true and whether you can believe in it enough to act are two different things.

If that is so, then for the sake of improving at aerial (and for any goal one may face in life), why should one not be allowed to choose what to believe and what not to believe?

If believing something makes me even slightly better at aerial, I will believe it; if it does the reverse, I will not. That is the creed of the finest player, one who can exploit to one’s own advantage even the very irrationality of being human, and use it as though it too were a rational instrument.
In this game of life, played almost without our even noticing it, every belief can become either a weapon or a weakness.

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For instance, beliefs such as “I will become a top professional in aerial,” “hard work is always rewarded,” or even “I can use a little magic to nullify gravity” will, so long as you can believe them from the heart, probably make you better at aerial in the end, regardless of whether they are true.

By contrast, ideas such as “I’m too old for this,” “If I can train only once a week, I won’t be ready for a competition in two months,” or “As a man, I can’t do a split hold beyond 180 degrees” are highly likely to become shackles on your progress in aerial, whether they are true or not, simply by being believed.

You will, no doubt, have all manner of thoughts about aerial and about yourself. But it may be worth sorting your ideas in just this way: by whether they serve your one decisive interest, which is to get better. From among them, you need only believe the former.
A belief doesn’t have to be true to produce results.

There may also be ideas you hesitate over, unsure whether they help your progress in aerial or hold it back. For me, one such idea is the interpretation that my body has already passed its age-related peak of performance, and that from here onward it will decline.

To believe this may sharpen the way I throw myself into practice, under the thought that even so, I am younger now than I will ever be again. Yet at the same time, when something fails to go well, it may also make it easier to surrender by blaming age.

I do not know whether I perform even 1% better or 1% worse in aerial by believing that my peak is already behind me rather than still far ahead.
Perhaps such things may simply be believed or not believed according to one’s taste. That cast of mind, surely, will go on to shape your aerial style.

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According to a temple priest I once heard speak, who also serves as a spiritual counselor to condemned prisoners, even inmates in prison cannot be saved if they do nothing but curse their own bad luck, thinking that they were caught by misfortune alone (or else framed by someone). Such people, he said, are beyond salvation forever. Those, on the other hand, who use the condition of being imprisoned in a cell, cut off from the world, as an opportunity to look back over their lives and devote themselves to self-improvement, those are the ones who can be saved. Even if they are death-row inmates standing before the gallows.

Not only I, but everyone, I believe, is a prisoner confined by experiences, by the body, by the circumstances, in other words by the cage of reality. Yet even within that intractable cage, one still remains free to choose how to feel and what to believe.

Then the question is whether, even when you know something is not true, even when there are perfectly sensible reasons to doubt it, you can still believe in what saves you and in what serves the fulfillment of your purpose.
How far can I, can you, go on believing in this world?
Can even a fragile placebo, one whose effect vanishes the instant you can no longer believe in it, be made into an ally in seizing hold of fate?
Whether it is a lie or a truth as brazen as a lie does not matter in the least.