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Reader question:
In this sentence - "What I tell my clients is you
just need to have a leap of faith in trusting the professionals" - what is
a leap of faith? And, what does that sentence mean?
My comments:
In that particular sentence, an advisor of some ilk
appears to be talking to a potential client. He means this: "You need to
trust me even if you have to change your entire belief system. I'm a
professional. I know what I am doing. Put all your money in my hand and
let me make investment decisions for you."
If you have half a million yuan currently slumbering in the bank making
negligible interest and so want to invest that money in something else,
you'll probably face a similar situation. Do you listen to professional
advice? Do you trust them to do what's in your best interest? And, if so,
to what degree do you trust them?
If you have doubts in them and still decide to follow their advice to a
T, you may say to yourself: "I'm really having a leap of faith in these
people because I can't believe I'm doing this. Total strangers and yet I'm
letting them handle my money for me, something I never thought I would
ever do."
Or some rant to similar effect.
Faith is different from belief.
Belief is a physical feeling that something is true, as in "I'll have
to see it to believe it." Faith on the other hand is metaphysical, if you
will. Faith can be complete, total and sometimes irrational
(against-reason) trust in someone or something.
Faith, understandably, is associated with religion, for example, as in
"he has faith in God". It can be blind. Whenever I hear US President
George W. Bush signs off a bellicose speech against Iraq with "God Bless
America", I wonder if that God would not do the same and bless Iraq, if
he's a good God, you know (and I have no problem believing that He is),
even at a time when a war is currently on being waged against that
country. If I speak from my own rational belief system, I would say that
God would give his Blessings to one and all and would not in His right
mind allow wars to be carried out in His name. But then, I might correctly
be accused of lacking faith in that old gentleman who giveth and taketh
away and so why couldn't I just leave everything to God and His Will and
obey His Commandment thou shalt not kill….
I'm being carried away.
Now let's have a look at the word "leap" in the phrase "leap of faith".
A leap by definition is a big jump, as in, "you're improving by leaps
and bounds" or "the Chinese Great Leap Backward (Forward, sorry) years of
the late 1950s and early 60s".
A leap of imagination, on the other hand, is a "mental process that is
needed to understand something difficult or see the connection between two
very different ideas" (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English). For
example, it takes a leap of imagination for Thomas Edison to turn
electricity into light via the light bulb.
A leap of faith of course is an even greater leap of imagination
involving a whole change of one's belief system. It must have taken a leap
of faith, for example, for the said Edison to believe he could succeed in
creating the light bulb, something never done before.
A leap of faith is, therefore, what the Chinese call "a qualitative
leap", or a change so sudden and abrupt that it might be deemed
unrecognizable using conventional wisdom.
This "qualitative leap" is what they say in physics "a quantum leap", a
change in which an electron within an atom goes from one energy level to
the next. An electron is a basic particle (of which larger particles are
composed) that orbits the nucleus (center) of an atom. Atoms, made of
particles, are of course the basic unit of matter. Atoms are made up of a
nucleus (consisting of protons and neutrons) surrounded by orbiting
electrons.
Anyhow, a quantum leap in quantum mechanics parlance represents the
smallest change possible and yet it appears like a "qualitative change"
(rather than quantitative change). The sun, for example, emits light as a
result of quantum leaps. That's why in everyday chatter, "a quantum leap"
becomes a big, abrupt, revolutionary change, rather than a small,
continuous, evolutionary change.
If you as a basketball player customarily make two of every ten shots
you take from beyond the 3-point line (6.25 meters far from the basket),
and then all of a sudden begin to make every nine of ten, that will
represent a quantum leap for you.
In a Beijing Star Daily report (seen July 1, 2006 on Tom.com), Yao
Ming, recuperating from a foot surgery, was said to be able to make "18 of
20 shots from 3-point range during his solo practice in Shanghai". For
Yao, who's never known for 3-point shooting, I think that would represent
a quantum leap too.
In fact, it would take a leap of faith and a big leap of imagination
for me to believe this report to be true.
I want to believe the report to be true. I want to trust the reporter
(who is surnamed Liu) to be telling the truth (I find no reason for either
him or his paper to lie) but I don't believe it. I have faith in Yao to be
able to do it, but I don't believe him doing it just yet, judging from his
3-point shooting history. It makes no sense, either for him to shoot
3-pointers - being a center, Yao's job is to work under and close to the
basket.
However, if Yao indeed wants to be a 3-point shooter, he will first
need a leap of faith to even believe that he can do it.
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