Did I Get it Backwards?

On love, fear, and our endless quest to feel safe

Detail from “Nature Seeks Balance” 48” x 48” ©Sarah Bush

Ever since I wrote about the relationship between love and our imaginations in my post, Discovering Fire for a Second Time, I’ve been thinking about the huge impact of our endless quest for safety.

Near the end of that essay, I said:

“The more we use our imaginations like this, the more deeply we re-connect ourselves to nature and the web of life. The more we connect ourselves to the web of life, the more we remember who we are, where we come from, and how vast our ‘immediate family’ actually is.

And that in turn, changes the baseline for how we’ll start to imagine everything else—our perception of what safety looks like. Or freedom. Or equality. Any and all of it.”

By increasing our capacity to imagine into a greater lovingness, we can start to imagine a different kind of safety.

On the one hand, I completely think that’s true. On the other, I almost wonder if I got it backwards.

Because fear, not love, is the driver for wanting to be safe. And since fear is the opposite of love, it’s extremely difficult for humans to be loving when we don’t feel safe.

As mammals, we’re very focused on our personal safety. I’d argue that the pursuit of safety is the underlying driver, really, of almost all our actions or decisions—big and small. From avoiding a conflict with a friend to having blind support for U.S. military aggression.

“Big T” and “small t” trauma inform so much of the unhelpful patterns we automatically employ to “be safe”—such as telling ourselves we’re protecting our relationships by not being honest, or choosing to do what’s expedient rather than what’s hard in order to maintain a status quo that feels safer than the change that might occur if we rock the boat.

And because our mammalian wiring to be safe is literally an expression of our survival instinct, it’s also difficult not to succumb to those “this is how I’m safe” behavior patterns when any kind of conflict, turmoil, or change happens.

Given that our notion of societal safety is grounded in our perceptions about our personal safety, it’s no wonder that gun culture is pathologically ingrained in so many parts of this country. And it’s no wonder that so few of us think to question our wildly over-funded, hyper-militarized global police presence because it’s all done in the name of “national security.”

This is why I think we might have to first use our imaginations to redefine and re-shape what it means to be safe before we can use our imaginations to enhance our ability to love.

But what might that look like?

As an excitable person, I know well that the flip-side of excitement is anxiety. I’m realizing lately that I basically feel one or the other most of the time. So I’ve been working to simply notice my anxiety as it arises rather than automatically succumb to it. I notice how it shows up as tension in my body, in my sleep quality, and in the ways I comfort myself.

But anxiety is probably an obvious one. There are other socially acceptable behavior patterns that seem to have nothing to do with trying to be safe—like perfectionism. To me, all perfectionism is an act of self-violence based on the need to be safe. Because the story you’ve told yourself is that you’re only okay—you’re only safe—if you’re perfect.

Honestly, just doing this kind of noticing on a personal level could keep us all quite busy. But of course there are so many opportunities to extend this noticing to how the quest to be safe gets expressed in our families, our communities, our country, and the whole family of life on earth.

And if enough of us actually do that—extend the noticing all the way out—I believe it might help lay the groundwork for the next big step in our evolution as a species, one that would help us use the power of our imaginations as the vehicles of loving connection and creation that they truly are.

Here are some questions I’ve been asking my imagination to work on:

• How can I imagine and define safety so that my safety includes your safety? So that our safety includes their safety?

• How can I create safety for myself and others around me through acts of love and generosity of spirit instead of living my story of vulnerability and defensive reaction—even, or especially, in the midst of a conflict?

• How can I make my home safer by making my community safer?

• How can I help imagine a culture that doesn’t need or use dominance to feel safe?

• How can I help imagine a national security that isn’t about endlessly preparing for war—especially since that constant preparation for war is destroying the climate in which we thrive as a species?

• And of course, how can I be more loving when I don’t feel safe?

I’ve got a million questions like these, and I ask myself all of them when I lie awake at night. Trying to answer any of them feels like a tall order. And yet, it also seems like the most vital first step to finding ways to make the quest for safety and the quest for love be the same thing.

Because, like all contradictions, it’s not either or, but both and.

I know I don't have all the answers, or even any. But I'd like to start finding some—out loud, together. That's what I want to gently explore at the Pink Teacup Cafe zoom call this Wednesday, August 5th at 10am Mountain time (that’s tomorrow.)

You don’t have to have definitive opinions on this topic to join the conversation. We can just wonder. Try ideas out. Acknowledge hard things. Imagine possible baby steps.

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If you’re already a paid subscriber, you can register for the call with the link at the top of this email. And remember, no pressure—it’s a coffee date not a test.

In the meantime, anyone can leave a comment about this topic by clicking the button below. Who knows, your thoughts might provide great fodder for the conversation we’ll have tomorrow—even if you don’t or can’t come that day.