Illusions of Safety
the web we weave that keeps us stuck
First off, a little running update.
If you missed last weeks post, definitely check it out first.
After a week of walking my miles Sunday rolled around and 7 miles were on the calendar. I truly didn’t know if I would be able to run any of them or not, but as it turned out, I basically ran the entire thing minus 2 hills where my ankle and intuition collaborated in communication that I should walk. And so I did. But otherwise, running! Amazing. Grateful. Hopeful to keep at it and to do so pain free.
I get into these spaces in my brain where I am wildly unsatisfied with my life. Is this normal? I don’t know. Is this healthy? I also don’t know. Is this something that I want to pay attention to and use? Yes, I do.
Let me preface this by saying that just because I am unsatisfied does not mean that I am not grateful or blessed with abundance in many ways. I am. But I hate the severity of the either/or perspective in situations like this where it can very much be both/and instead.
I find that if you express how you’re unsatisfied with your life (or something similar) then you are often met with judgement from the “it could be worse” crowd. Yes, it could be worse but upon the reflections that I am currently making, it could be better too. I am allowed to feel this way without guilt for what someone else doesn’t have or what I do have.
Because after all, when we get better and improve our lives we are able to show others what is possible for them and help them improve their lives too.
Over the years I have been progressively playing it more and more safe. Most people with chalk it up to just a symptom of getting older but I don’t subscribe to that. I wasn’t like this years ago and I don’t want to be like this in years to come. But as time has passed I have found safety to be more of a theme. And let’s be real, when we’re playing it safe it is ultimately a false sense of safety at the core. It’s an illusion. You could have the best 9-5 job in the world but realistically that could be taken away from you in an instant. Will it happen? Probably not. Could it happen? Absolutely. So the safety that you feel in your 9-5 is a false sense of safety when it comes down to it. Insert that into a whole variety of aspects of life for the same result. And while I’m not necessarily seeking safety in a 9-5, I am drawn to the illusion in other ways.
Not to try to remove myself from the responsibility that I have in this human experience, but I do believe that Covid played a big role in this safety conundrum for me. My fear for the virus lasted about a month, so in grand scheme of things it wasn’t that I was afraid of getting sick. It was more so the state of going out into the world and feeling completely uncomfortable for not wearing a mask. It was seeing how many people followed along with the mandates even if they didn’t agree with them. Walking down isles and not making eye contact with anyone because how can you know if they’re smiling at you or scowling at you? It was being attacked in and kicked out of stores for not masking and having no one stick up for me. I literally got sprayed (with disinfectant spray) out of a convenience store in Wyoming and followed out of a store by a screaming employee in Virginia for not wearing a mask. All of this, and more built into how I exist in the world today. It was the complete separation of society and lack of safety that I felt in the world.
From that point on I have lived my life differently and existed differently. I was talking with a friend about this recently. She hardly ever goes out in public at all after Covid. She works from home and orders everything she needs online. Her story is very similar to mine. I do that too. While we are “getting back to normal” as a society it is also not at all the same. The masks are gone but the imprint of the divisive 2020-2021 era is deep.
After the mold I landed right back in the place where I grew up. The same place that my past self vowed to never live. I’ve let her down. I see that and I feel that. I think that it’s reflected in the ways that I avoid going out into the world and stick to the safety of my homebound routine. Just like I felt uncomfortable out in the world at the height of Covid, I feel uncomfortable in my hometown. I don’t want to be here and I never wanted to be here. And yet, I am here. I am here because it is safe.
These are just a few examples of untangling the web of safety that I have woven over the years and with time I will continue to work through even more. The first step to recognizing the illusion of safety is to accept it for what it is. To accept where you’re at and why you’re there.
Safety and comfort are slippery slopes, often keeping us mesmerized under their spells while our dreams and goals continually try to swim to the surface of a lake murky with the illusions holding us back.
I have no plans or ideas of how to make some leaps and bounds into a life I am proud of. I am in the process of figuring that out though. After all, that’s all we’re ever doing - existing in the essence of figuring it out. Reflection and realization of how you feel about your life is a gift when you can take that and turn it into something beautiful.