Safety.
What
is it?
Where
is it?
Is
it even
a
good thing?
There
is safety in the grave.
Nothing
can hurt me
if
I’m dead.
There
is safety in a wall.
You
can’t hurt me
if
you can’t touch me.
There’s
safety in transcendence,
because
hurt is irrelevant
when
I am everything.
There’s
safety in ontological security blankets,
in
believing in an after-life,
in
believing in a higher power, a divine plan,
in
believing
this
is not really happening.
There
is safety in numbers,
in
belonging to a group,
a
tribe, a nation,
a
herd,
in
being like everyone else.
If
I live
I
will be hurt
and
I will die.
If
I love
I
will feel
and
I will cry.
If
I am present
in
this human moment
I
will share the pain
all
living beings feel.
If
I allow myself to see the world
as
it is,
without
the comfort of religious beliefs,
I
am overwhelmed by the chaos
and
the complexity
and
I am afraid.
If
I am strong enough
to
walk alone,
to
be my own person,
to
speak my own truth
and
live my own vision
as
it is revealed to and by me,
there
are moments of loneliness.
Yet
the moments when we meet
are
infinitely sweeter
because
our masks are down.
“When
two people really love each other
there
can be no happy end to it.”
Love
is like a circle,
like
time and paradox,
earth
and sky.
No
going without a return
and
no hello without a goodbye.
Love
is eternal.
I
feel it deep inside.
Love
and morning sunlight remind me
that
the joy is worth the pain.
The
love is deepened by the sorrow.
The
beautiful is transfigured by the grotesque.
And
the lesson is derived from the experience.
Only
in darkness, light.
Only
in dying, life.
My
safety lies in knowing
if
I breathe
and
allow myself to feel
all
emotions can flow through me.
My
safety lies in remembering
the
love and the loss
and
in the awareness
of
the love that still remains.
My
safety lies in feeling
all
the hurt and all the joy.
Feeling
is my connection
to
the Earth, to home.
My
safety lies in silence
and
in screams,
load
and piercing,
and
in wailing and in sobbing
and
in laughing
through
the tears.
My
safety lies in my friendships,
in
my relationships—
strong
, beautiful relationships,
still
fragile, still vulnerable,
like
all relationships,
but
vibrant, whole and alive.
My
safety is
my
self.
As
long as I am true
to
myself
I
am safe
even
when
I’m
not.
-Joshua
Putnam
20 May 2003