Faith (noun) - Absolute Confidence.
One of the first questions that countless people over the course of my life have asked when we meet is about my name. “How did you get the name ‘Paris’?” Then they hear my last name and just can’t help saying it together, “Paris Winter.” Invariably, there is a remark that it’s the kind of name where I should be famous, or it should be the name of a character in a novel. Almost always there is the question of how I got my name.
Even though there is a story, I don’t plan to answer that here today. Look, hey.. Don’t log out!! Come back!!
I avoid explanation because the story is boring. I'll confirm though that it’s my birth name. Being pregnant, my mother created it after much thought. Maybe it was meant as her blessing for me? Yet for the first half of my life (especially in childhood – during the ‘70s when I was literally the only person named Paris—pre-celebrities named Hilton or Jackson) my name was a bit of a burden. Kids teased me about it as there is little understanding of anything that makes you different at that age. Plus these awkward social interactions that I’ve just described became tiresome at times when a person feels weird enough just getting through a checkout line or job interview.
In time, as an adult, my mother's wish has been fulfilled though. I’ve come to embrace my name and realize that it’s a good conversation starter, and it makes me memorable. One of the things I would like to focus on is my middle name, “Faith.” My mother, in typical mom-fashion, pulled out my middle name to let me know when she meant business. So I typically avoided it like the plague. But when I was considering how to ‘brand’ myself during the decision to launch as a professional vocalist, I was faced with the fact that both my first and last names have many common associations with them (namely the city and the season, and those pesky Hiltons and Jacksons). So I needed a way to distinguish myself, and there was this gift from birth.
Then it dawned on me to use my middle name... to embrace the whole pretty, romantic, unique moniker. It’s One-and-Only-ness. I also became conscious that “Faith,” encapsulates exactly what I’m about. Those who follow this blog know I’ve written about raising vibrancy, about upping our game, and the inner craving for inspiration. What about Faith?
The church-going folks I grew up with seemed to have some working definition of Faith that informed their approach to life. I’m very certain I sat through a sermon or two on the subject. But for anxiety-ridden me, the feeling of Faith always eluded me like a mirage in the desert. It really hasn’t been until the last several years that Faith became a real working principle for me.
TOUGH times are what crystalize a person's Faith. What I now know is that Faith is a sense of absolute peace and confidence that everything is going to be alright. Even when circumstances seem intimidating, daunting or flat ugly – a sense of Faith sustains an inner confidence, a true knowing that God, Higher Power, The Universe, Allah, Spirit, Inner Divinity, Soul Nirvana, call it what you will, has WONDERFUL things in store for you and me. Life, the thing that animates us and makes us alive, is made of more than the things we see and think are real. There is a bit of magic! We have protection from our ancestors, angels, and guides. The more we can tap into that aspect of life, knowing the sun does not cease to exist just because it is temporarily behind the clouds, the more our paradigm shifts and expands.
How can we personally cultivate Faith? Meditation, prayer, gratitude, and consciously setting our attention and intention on the things we want to manifest. Your dreams are there for a reason. They call you to create them tangibly through Faith along with your own vigor.