The Illusion of Safety – contributed by Leslie Dinkins-Perez, LCSW
People LOVE their bubbles; the bubbles that make them FEEL safe, even if they aren’t ACTUALLY safe. This bubble is created by their belief system that usually includes thoughts such as, “My experience is the only one that’s real”, “If I don’t/do _______, then -insert bad thing- will never happen to me”, “I control everything that happens to me” .
These are lies. Lies that people repeat to themselves and others their entire lives, again, because it makes them FEEL safe.
The truth is this: SAFETY IS AN ILLUSION. Every single person on this planet is vulnerable at various points in their lives because THAT’S LIFE. We are vulnerable when we are in transitions in life and transitions happen TO ALL OF US. We are capable of being physically overcome by others- ALL OF US. We are ALL vulnerable to extreme natural events (meteors, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, fire, mudslides, tsunamis, cyclones, volcanos, ice storms, floods, etc.). We are ALL capable of falling ill or becoming injured-permanently or otherwise, and this can happen AT ANY AGE.
Does that paragraph above make you feel good? Of course not! But it is THE TRUTH. Your experience is not the only perspective. Your personal experience is so incredibly minuscule in comparison to everyone in the world…so is mine! If your experience were a needle in a haystack of everyone else’s, would you even be able to pick it out? More often than not, when presented with ideas that make us feel unsafe, we get angry. Really, we’re sad or scared, but that makes us feel vulnerable, so we, in turn, show anger instead because it makes us feel more powerful, aka ‘safer’.
What’s even sadder, is that people choose their delusion of safety and it isolates them from others, in good times and bad, and makes them feel alone. But those of us that understand the truth and keep going anyway can find community everywhere, and, hopefully, know that we are all in this together- in good times and bad.
THIS is what I believe is happening when people are out in the world showing their ass.
The best any of us can do for our own safety is accept the “ It Is What It Is” about being HUMAN- something that we ALL are- and live in the truth.
In the movie, living in ‘The Matrix’ was paradise in comparison to the drab, life-threatening, mush eating, same ‘ol everyday, underground living that was the actual real world. But I’d like to think, if given the choice, I’d choose to be AWAKE. – Leslie Dinkins-Perez, LCSW