I am grateful for the illusion of security. Now, you cannot get more bourgeois than carry this quaint obsession with being and feeling safe and secure in a very uncertain and perfidious world. This sense of denial of reality really began to develop in the fifties during the postwar era. Everyone was sick to death of the sense of danger and uncertainty that the Second World War had visited on us. No one wanted any more news of battles and bombs and blown to bits bodies of loved ones being buried in foreign graves, and of Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies and other people that Hitler didn't like getting gassed to death. No one wanted to wonder if tomorrow enemy planes and warships would be crossing their skies and docking on their shores. No matter how sexy the war, the destruction, the sense of danger and the not knowing if tomorrow your name would be another bombing statistic, everyone was glad it was over. Husbands and boyfriends were back home in bed with their loved ones where they belonged. Now everyone could make babies, raise spoiled and ungrateful little Boomer brats, and live happily ever after.
The absolute brainless fluff that characterized much of the incipient US pop culture of the fifties all kind of imploded when John Kennedy was shot in the back of the head and the war in Vietnam came to dominate headlines and newscasts. The racial strife throughout the US with the battle for civil rights told everyone in North America that maybe our false sense of security was coming to an end. More riots, burnings and bombings broke through following decades.
When the Twin Towers fell in 2001 everyone in the US suddenly knew, for the first time in their lives, that the world is not a safe place. It took them a while, but they finally began to catch up to the rest of the world, where that illusion of safety never had time to take hold in the collective mind.
Twenty years earlier, the odious spectre of child killer Clifford Robert Olson haunted us here in Vancouver and almost overnight teenage children suddenly were no longer hitch-hiking, families were paralyzed with fear and terror of lurking pedophiles and before we knew it, children were no longer allowed to play outside unless they stayed within a securely-fenced yard under perpetual adult supervision.
Now we all seem to be collectively traumatized by fear. We are afraid of terrorists, afraid of climate change, afraid of the Great Deplorable in the Oval Office, afraid of child molesters, afraid of becoming homeless and afraid of global nuclear war. Among other things. Our steady diet of breaking news, thanks to internet technologies has left many of us in a state of chronic angst and emotional paralysis.
We finally know now that the world is not, nor ever has been, a safe place. When large animals roamed the earth, our ancestors were in danger of being eaten by cave bears and sabre tooth cats. Then came developing ancient civilizations, the invention of war and the gruesome tortures and executions meted out to anyone who offended the gods, the priests or the ruling monarch. The enlightenment brought us democracy, liberal values and the industrial revolution. The world still wasn't safe, especially if you were a woman, a child, poor, or a black slave. As nationalism grew and advanced and colonialism wreaked genocide on aboriginal societies the world continued being unsafe. As we invented yet more sophisticated and deadly, lethal means of warfare, the world went on being unsafe. Now we are all whistling in the dark while awaiting global environmental collapse. Anyone still feel safe?
In order to really and fully recover from trauma it is essential that we take charge of our fear and learn to embrace life again. Life is not safe, nor does it carry any guarantees. All the same it is life. This is the time to step outside of our small tepid wading pools and move out among others again. This is the time to risk with others, with the world around us, meaningful contact. This is the time to laugh death and danger in the face.
We are all going to die, sometime. Yes, there is a reasonable expectation that we take care of ourselves and others. Still, any life that does not include risk, especially the risk of love, of reaching out to one another and making ourselves vulnerable, but not in a stupid way, is not life at all, but a prolonged and living death. We know we're really alive when we can go on hearing our heart beating without fearing that it will one day stop, all the while knowing that eventually it is going to stop and accepting with joy that we too are going to die. But let's save death for when it's our time to go, and to now get on with becoming truly present in the world and meaningfully touching one another's lives.
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