Safe

I've learned that life is not safe.

There is no safety as I move through life.  I've received mild food poisoning from restaurants I deemed "safe" to eat at.  A year ago, I had a "safe" job working on an account for a company with over fifty thousand employees that got purchased and changed their support model overnight, taking away the "safety" of a "secure" job in the blink of an eye.  Every single day, someone perishes in the "safety" of their crumple-zone automobile on the "safest" streets of my "safe" neighborhood.  My "safe" marriage disappeared and the "safety" I felt when I got home years ago from washing my car only to meet the wrong end of a man's knife ensured me that moment-by-moment, safety is a mirage.  An illusion.  We are not safe.  In fact, every single moment is tenuous - at risk.  Every breath I take of safety could contain something unsafe.

Life is really about mitigating fear to a point, but then what it becomes is boldly stepping forward into unsafety.  Claiming that life is too precious to be concerned for unsafety happens.  To love freely and fully, take risks and move forward.  Because, the lack of safety catches us regardless as to where we are.  Safety was, on September 10, 2001, two glorious buildings reaching to the skies.  In Louisiana, the lapping of water on the shoreline.  Hiding from it - protecting ourselves - is an illusion of safety that shows our own ignorance of the tenuousnous of life itself and of forces much greater than ours to prevent.  Only in living do we write the stories that live on beyond our crude attempts at self-protection.  Only in sharing ourselves with others do we truly make a mark on hearts and souls.  Only in the daily denial of fear and marching on can we tell safety that fear isn't a weapon anymroe.  And, in that living, we truly live beyond taking breath and eating a meal - we truly match our potential as human beings that at the end of the day will take a last breath regardless as to what model Volvo we drive, how much bottled water we have at home, what foods we eat, who we choose to "trust" or where we work.

Safety is in living.