Safety

Recently, I went to visit 2 people important to me in an old people’s home and made me start to think how much we value life. One of these people was in a spacious building, with access to a garden and a shared space and the other is in a place where the people felt like they are stacked like chickens with a light bulb, unable to open any window, everything feeling warm and a stuffy, weird smell present in the whole building. And all of this with the idea that it is not safe for old people to have access to open windows and balconies. And while this is true for dementia patients, I sometimes wonder, how much do we optimize our lives for safety, and forget that we should also optimize for enjoyment and beauty? Mind you this is easy to see for people who have lost their authority and self ownership, as they do not have much of a say in their physical surroundings, and probably most of the time they do not notice this. However, even if they do, we would dismiss them.

And this is not just about nursing homes, because personally I think we do this to an extent in our everyday life. We often settle for certain things because we believe we have to do this, in order to get our desired outcome. For example, we often think that one should work really hard and put in long hours, in order to be successful, and we settle to this constant grind without ever truly questioning it. And sometimes we end up living a less than an ideal life, just because we have put ourselves in a box. So similar to the people in nursing homes, who sometimes have less than ideal living situations for noble reasons, we also put limitations on our lives for other noble reasons. And all of this, because we feel safe in doing so.

We all love safety, we love to feel safe, and sometimes we have to ask ourselves what are we giving up in order to feel like this? and if we change something in our life, to make it more enjoyable or more beautiful, would we really lose the safety that we are protecting? and if we do, is this part of our life worth holding onto?