safety

As a society, we like to stress safety. We talk about it as if it's a physical thing we can move closer toward, when, really, it's an emotion. Some may argue that it's an idea, but the idea of it wouldn't be significant without the emotion that comes attached to it, so I say cut the middle talk. It's an emotion.

The thing about emotions is that they are inherently dynamic. Since they cannot help but to fluctuate, we understand that we may have to resolve the same issues over and over again. We understand that the choice to feel one way or another is one we have to make continually.

And, still, we like to act as if we can get to a particular emotion and stay there endlessly. We like to say things like, "I just want to be happy." as if it's a location on a map. If I just act this way and say these things and think these things, I'll find Happiness and what fun I'm going to have when I get there! It's utterly ridiculous, yet we do it all the time. Some of us more than others. The question, then, becomes: What are you going to feel in the meantime? Until you find Happiness, are you going to be sad, apathetic, angry, morose...what?

In thinking about safety, I find myself wondering: Until you feel safe, what are you going to feel in the meantime?

What a scary question. If you can't find it in yourself to feel safe now, when is it going to be safe to feel safe? (haha) Maybe never? Maybe next week? Maybe tomorrow? And, until then, you will feel how? I doubt you'll feel happy, because we equate safety and happiness with Positivity and if you are not already Positive, you must be Negative. That's very black-and-white, but I find that emotions tend to be such. If not one, then another. We may not always feel the opposite emotion, but we define emotions in oppositional language, so it will come up, eventually. If you are introspective enough for a long enough period of time, you will find that your emotional state will be seen as either positive or negative. It's the judging that makes the emotion meaningful.

There are folks who feel safer in feeling unsafe. Humans are creatures of habit and any emotion can become a habitual state. However, in the end, none of us sincerely strives to feel less than safe, I don't think. (Which is why those who go after the feeling of insecurity do so...to feel safe.)

Why do we cling this way to emotions? Is it truly inherent to being human? I still don't understand it and yet none of us seems immune. It feels safer to some of us to see the doctor for every sniffle, yet there are those who feel doctors add a level of danger to life. (There's even some overlap there. LOL) What helps one person feel safe is not always what helps another, as feelings are perceptions and opinions. They are not facts. There is no objectivity in discussing them, which is why it is said that feelings are never wrong.

To feel safe is possible. To be safe? Not so much. And, when you take into consideration that every moment you are alive, you are simultaneously dying, what importance does safety have?

Perhaps it is only a tool. And as with all tools, we must be careful how we use it.