By Matthew Piling

I’m a chronic non-finisher—or maybe a recovering one. Whatever label you want to use, I’ve started plenty of projects and ventures with excitement and energy, only to let them fizzle out once the initial momentum wore off. For a long time, I accepted the idea—my own and others’—that this meant I was lazy. After all, I had so many half-finished ideas and efforts behind me. But over time, especially as I’ve come to understand the Laws of Rare Faith, I’ve realized that laziness wasn’t the real issue. What I was missing was a deeper understanding of life’s natural rhythms.

Life is cyclical. The sun rises and sets. Tides roll in and out. The seasons come and go, again and again. These patterns have repeated for as long as Earth has existed—reliable, consistent, and completely outside our control. What an amazing foundation that is for faith: we know these patterns will continue, and we can make decisions and move forward with confidence based on that certainty.

But when it comes to the Rare Faith that’s required to move mountains—not just the kind that notices patterns but the kind that creates new outcomes—we tend to forget all that reliability the moment things don’t go as planned. A downturn hits, and suddenly that becomes the only piece of “evidence” we allow. It’s as if we put the entire idea of possibility on trial, and the downturn alone convinces judge and jury that we were wrong all along. It’s easy in those moments to doubt ourselves and think, If this were really right, it wouldn’t be this hard.

Leslie often explains the Law of Relativity through the analogy of a pendulum: as it swings in one direction, we can trust that it will swing equally in the other. That’s basic physics—equal and opposite reactions. And it’s comforting. It reminds me that when life feels like it’s moving away from my goals, the return swing is on its way.

But the more I’ve thought about that analogy, the more I’ve realized that I’d been applying it too passively. A pendulum doesn’t swing forever without an outside force. Eventually, it slows down and stops. If I see myself as just the weight on the end of a pendulum, then I’m relying on something outside of me to keep things moving. But Rare Faith isn’t about passively waiting for the light to return. It’s about being the light. It’s about connecting to a Divine Source and using that power to bring light into the darkness.

So now, I think of the Law of Relativity more like a swing than a pendulum. I’m not just dangling there, waiting for something to happen. I’m on the swing, actively pumping my legs, building my own momentum. It starts small, but it builds—and how high I go depends entirely on how willing I am to keep moving. The rhythm is still there: up and down, push and release. But I don’t sit on a swing and wish it only went up. I enjoy the whole ride, knowing that each downswing stores up the energy needed for the next climb. When I work with that rhythm—pushing at the right time, resting at the right time—I soar. It’s simple, and it’s exhilarating.

Now imagine jumping off the swing mid-downswing just because things weren’t going the way you wanted. That abrupt stop wouldn’t just end your motion—it could hurt. Yet we do this in life all the time. We bail out when we hit a downturn, even though we know the upswing is coming. And in doing so, we risk more harm than if we’d just stayed on and kept pumping.

So as you move through the swings of life, let the downswings fuel your next rise. Keep pumping. Push when it’s time to push. Relax when it’s time to rest. And no matter how low things may seem at the bottom, remember: the top is just a moment away.

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