Existential dread in elementary school

belief 🔄 commitment

I have the clearest memory of sitting in my fifth-grade history class. Our teacher was telling us about an English evangelist who came to the American colonies to spread the teachings of the Anglican Church. The twist - apparently - was that he didn’t actually believe it at the time. He converted later in life, but back then, he was essentially faking it.

“Isn’t that just awful?” she asked. We all nodded solemnly, self-serious eleven-year-olds doing our best to mirror adult outrage.

But even then - sitting at a laminate desk in the Texas Panhandle - I remember thinking: Is it? Is it actually awful? If the message was good and the impact was real, did it matter that he hadn’t fully bought in yet?

Here’s the heretic himself preaching to the masses (Thomas Walley - 1863). Fun fact - he went on to start the Methodist Church after his conversion.

Obviously, I didn’t frame it that way as a kid. I didn’t have the language. But the question - some version of it, at least - has stuck with me ever since.

Is it enough to want to want the right things?

Or put another way: if you orient your life around a set of principles you intellectually believe in, even if your heart doesn’t always get on board, is that still a solid foundation? Can you live a good life on borrowed conviction?

It’s a question I come back to a lot - especially now, when culture feels like it’s been turned on its head and mind-blowing tech drops every single week. It’s never felt more important to have a core set of values - and never more difficult to figure out what those should be, buried under a constant barrage of content and opinions. There’s this unspoken pressure to be all in and to mean it, completely.

But what about those of us who don’t run on certainty?

I have this brain glitch where I get stuck in loops. I’ll latch onto an anxiety theme and spiral about it, going down ever more niche Reddit holes until I look up and realize it’s four hours later and, shockingly, I still haven’t found any life-altering clarity in the comments section of r/askphilosophy.

I think about that evangelist and feel bad for the guy. I imagine it was isolating (he didn’t have reddit to commiserate with). Maybe he was a fraud. Or maybe he was just trying to step into something he hoped would eventually feel true. Maybe going through the motions eventually gives us the foundation we’re looking for.

Thanks for reading—or for mega scrolling all the way down here.

The internet is an overwhelming mess of headlines, ads, and mid takes from the worst people you know. Big Tech owns our attention spans. Everything is content. Nothing makes sense.

We’re not here to “fix discourse” or “build a better internet.” Relay is just our attempt to riff on what we’re already talking about at happy hour without feeling like we’ve been hit by a content truck. Some analysis, some memes, call it a day.

You might like it. Tag along.

Other Essays you can check out:

• What I Give Up for the Preekend

• Seasonal seesaw

• Refusal to quit

• Requiem for Travel

• On Forward Momentum

Subscribe and leave us a comment so we know you’re out there.