False Sense of Security

I'm lucky enough to come from a long line of hard working, kind people. They are intelligent people with grit and generosity in their hearts. So like many I was raised to believe - despite some deeper part of me sensing otherwise - that the way to security was to establish a good job and all the trappings of what people have come to accept as success. I fell in line with the rules, I behaved (most of the time), and I bought into the idea I was supposed to be rewarded for doing this.

Even though I had deep philosophical questions about this well accepted "truism", I ignored them because I was trying to be a good child, and eventually a "mature" adult who accepted her responsibilities to those around her. It didn't matter that I didn't want to go straight away to college, for example, or to forgo it all together for art school and traveling the world. As long as I said OK to everyone else's idea of a good life, I would somehow come to settle and agree upon the same conclusion.

Until I didn't.

Oh I tried to agree. I tried with all I had to wash away the questions, the general malaise of clocking in and out of a 9-5, waiting for the chance to take the whole 2 weeks of vacation afforded to me by a system that never considered why 2 weeks was was still a fair and balanced protocol for a healthy existence. I tried to explore my questions with others, my committed fiance of 12 years, and play with other concepts of what joy and meaning and security could look like all while making the decision to remain within the playbook. But I was met with so much fear from others as well as myself that it not only contributed to me losing everything I thought defined my life but also to me hiding in shame who I was so that no one could criticize or judge me as I AM.

I see others stepping into this space of questioning right now and I am both excited and triggered. The quarantine, riots, the loss of work, the loss of identity and structures that no longer allow us to define ourselves by systems and ideas that originated outside of ourselves are the same systems and ideas we've given over our personal power to. So many are coming to understand, even if it's subconsciously, that "other" doesn't exist and that ultimately the Self is the ONE contributing to the whole. On the very deep, personal experience of what our collective is facing, we perhaps see for the first time that our unhappiness and security in certain areas of our lives means we have to take personal responsibility for creating it in the first place.

That's scary shit.

To know you and only you are completely responsible for your experience and free at all times - regardless of your bills, spouses, etc. - to choose differently means you can't pass the buck onto someone else. It also means that you may have to come to terms with all the ways you've chosen against yourself to instead accept a generalized version of success, happiness, and security. It may even mean you come to realize that this acceptance of generalized success in jobs and bank accounts, for instance, means you've dropped into a competitive, zero-sum game whereby you've blindly or inadvertently put others at a disadvantage in achieving their own version of abundance.

Of course these are just examples.

This awareness is our life work and so too is all of the regret, pain, self-forgiveness necessary in finding a sense of inner security. Are you brave enough to look at it? To feel it? Are you committed to the internal work so your heart can be open to another reality that you currently may think is out of your grasp...our grasp?

I've been on this path for several years if not my whole life, and I can tell you some days listening to the Self rather than the "easier" collective version of the truth -or even that of my loving parents ;) - is a challenge. But if I can offer something it is this: you will never find security in your house, your job, your retirement account, your spouse, or even your dog. Any of those, as we all have plenty of proof now, can be taken at anytime.

...This is some zen master shit, friends... this period of time is literally slapping us on the ass to wake the hell up.

You are more than capable of taking this moment in history to re-defining your life in a way that is best for you. You don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water, but you do have to claim your power back in order to find your truth. Because your truth is the only security that exists.

... which is a great reminder, even to me. So thank you.