The Myth of Security

More Thinking :)

It seems to me that pretty much the whole Western world is obsessed with the idea of achieving "security".
What that means is that we are all afraid of the future! - We are terrified of change! Why so?

Well, its true, there are a bunch of unpleasant things that can happen in the future, but if we want then a bunch of pleasant things could happen instead.
We seem to have the idea that we want to "lock in" the good stuff of now for the future and then only take the good stuff of tomorrow and not the bad stuff. It seems also that the whole world is telling us to "Worry about tomorrow" and "Worry about other people". The whole mentality of the West seems to be to sell each other on the WORRY aspect of things. Its true, and its easy to see it if you just look at the size and profit levels of the insurance companies.

But it seems to me that what they are selling is a false objective!

I look around at... Well at absolutely everything really, and all I can see is constant change. There is not a single thing in the physical world that does not get created/made, exist for a while, maybe change a bit, and then sooner or later gets destroyed. Likewise in the living world, everything comes to life, matures, declines and dies. This idea applies to microbes, whales, cars, houses, communities, companies, civilizations, stars, the universe - It is a universal LAW.

So why do we all fight it? We want our neighborhood to stay as it was when we bought into the area and hate it when the block next door turns into apartments. We want the language we use to stay the same and hate the "slang that the kids these days use". We want our relationships to be forever, We want our parents to be forever, We want our life to be forever, .... We resist and we get stressed over it and it makes us unhappy people!


One of the biggest ways that this has affected me over the years is the fact that I couldn't find something that I could do (work wise) that was immune to being destroyed or used for what I considered a "negative" result by others.
This has meant that I never took on any task that I truly valued. This in turn has left me feeling very unfulfilled and consequently I have felt unhappy and projected it into my world... Bummer!
Likewise, with buying a house, It took me forever to commit to something because it wasnt just right and I would not be happy with it in the long run.
Same thing in relationships - not good enough, I wont commit...
Its like I´m wasting my life waiting for the future to get better so that I can start living - Talk about a waste!

Trouble here is that nothing ever will be perfect, and even if it is, I´ll change and the world will change and then the perfect will have passed anyway...

So I' ve known about this "everything must change" aspect of life for years and the best I could come up with to try to get around the problem was to take it to the intellectual level...

I figured that it was possible to have original ideas that would last and that ideas could last by passing them on to other people (worthy ideas to worthy people that is). So, I figured that my calling was probably going to end up as a teacher of some sort....but that still didnt feel quite right and Ive not yet started to pursue that path.

More recently, I decided to take a good look at the concept of ideas as potentially timeless and it turns out it is the same as the physical world!
As far as I can tell, there is not a single idea that I have now that has not come into existence through the demise or at least heavy modification of some other idea that I used to have. I look at the world of ideas and attitudes in society and the same thing is absolutely true! I therefore conclude that all the ideas that I have now will also at some point "die" or at least "evolve" and I will have new ideas that are better adapted for the world that I will be living in (which is also evolving). Its just one of those things that you cant beat. Absolutely everything has its time and when it is appropriate, it will be replaced by something else.- Again, it is a universal LAW.

So, what to do? - Im tired of waiting and wasting my life!

Well, having thoroughly reviewed the situation on the physical, emotional, and mental fronts and found that there is NO possibility of "security/permanence", I think the solution is, yet again, ACCEPTANCE.

So, there is no choice really, and sitting around waiting is not a choice either.
Therefore, Im no longer going to focus on the outcomes and instead Im going to focus on the activities. Im going to be willing to do things more "just for the sake of doing them" and I' ll just accept that it is a temporary or even irrelevant result. The big trick here is to NOT CARE about the result!
I cant quite manage this totally though (I do still care about the result) but Im going to accept that the result is just a "maybe" and a temporary one at that, and Ill focus on enjoying the doing. Im far from perfected in this outlook, but Im a lot less stressed about the future than I have been ever before :)


This all sounds great in theory, but its going to be very tricky to integrate it with other people; They all still believe in the security myth...
Its a hard sell to try to get a job when you tell them in the interview "I´ll do it till I dont like doing it any more and then Ill leave".
And harder still to have a relationship when you tell people "I´ll spend time with you till I dont enjoy it anymore"...
- Dont get me wrong, It could last a long time, but it could also be very short - Im just not going to let that stop me from giving it a go if I think there will be enjoyment in the attempt :)
So, Im going to have to figure out how to be honest but not share too much of my outlook! Other people just wont get it and I really dont enjoy causing people grief!

The point for me is that the future is uncertain and there is NOTHING I can do about it but ACCEPT it. Its also the future and I can do little about it now. I will enjoy now as best I can and try to be ready and accepting of whatever comes.

This does not mean that I wont plan and try to make the future good. What it means is that I will not dwell on the future - I will think about it when needed, make decisions when needed and act on them. Other than that I´ll leave it be as it is - in the future, and Ill work on the now.

"Now" has plenty to engage me if I stop thinking about the future :)