Having faith is admitting that you don’t have all the answers for what comes next. Another phrase I’ve found useful to describe this state of mind is what the spiritual teacher Tara Brach calls “radical acceptance,” which she says “is the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as it is.

In other words, given sufficient coping strategies, people will be willing to tolerate consistent levels of misery for long stretches of time. Is there anything that can override this? In my conversations with people who have made changes in their life, one thing seems to work reliably: wonder.