safety & security.
When we place our internal sense of safety and security outside of ourselves, we’ll inevitably always be let down. It could be via a tidal wave or a small ripple, but somehow the lesson will always come. It may just lead to a wake-up call towards how to reestablish and build a new foundation of security within.
With the influx of people losing jobs, we see not just a loss of financial stability, but truly a loss of identity. In today’s world, we do not simply do jobs, we are our jobs in so many ways. We introduce ourselves and our role in the world via the career path we’ve paved. So amid layoffs and losses in our career, a tidal wave ensues. Suddenly, what seems so safe and like a permanent fixture in our lives has toppled over and we’re left wondering just who we are.
In many ways, we have been taught to place our sense of faith and security in our companies and jobs, allowing them to permeate our innermost selves. Yet when we do so and a loss occurs, it feels more striking than ever before. Suddenly we look out and wonder what we can trust if such a blow could bring us down in a sudden instance. We’re left in the rubble and bestowed the need to rebuild. Perhaps on another footing this time.
When we drift away from a friend that gave us a sense of feeling safe, we can feel lost at sea. The slow drift is different from a crashing wave, but we begin to contemplate who we are without this person that brought a sense of stability to our lives. Maybe part of our day-to-day routines was woven around this very person and suddenly some small piece of who we are is called into question. A small piece that starts to unwind other aspects of ourselves.
Whether it be a job, a relationship, family, or any other aspect of life, if we place our sense of safety in something external there will come a time that we’ll be pushed on that. Pushed to consider whether anything outside of us is truly a completely fixed fragment of our lives. Things change slowly, or all at once, but they always change. If we put too much of our internal security into the things that may and likely will change, we will always be let down.
The bright light of losing ourselves in a false sense of security is that we may just begin to question and get curious about what stability actually looks like. And somehow it always leads to going back home within and finding the space inside to rebuild. To create a foundation that cannot be ripped out from underneath you, because that foundation is you. You are your sense of safety. You are your greatest foundation.