What Does Safety Look Like to You?
And how to cultivate it in yourself.
And how to cultivate it in yourself.
Today I wanted to talk about what I’ve been creating lately and what thoughts have come up in those creations. So, I’ve noticed that safety, security, peace, these are all words that are very triggering for me. They almost feel unattainable. I created a habit of believing that bringing chaos into my life meant that I was growing. That that was what I thrived in, and I never spent long enough in a place to find that sense of safety.
I didn’t really bother to try to be honest. In two of my apartments, I never even bothered to buy a couch, because I thought, “well, I’m leaving soon so what’s the point in creating a home?”
And I was very jealous of people that took the time to decorate and make the space their own. It was very easy for me to shun that part of me and accept that I’m used to chaos and that chaos means I’m growing and I’m having more experiences and if I start putting effort into creating my home then that means I’m settling and not going to continue changing.
I’ve noticed in this period of life I’ve been focusing on that creation of safety and figuring out what it means to be safe on my own terms. Maybe safety isn’t even the right term, maybe it’s a sense of belonging. I remember I spent so many years feeling like I don’t belong here in any place I moved. This feeling of I’m not where I’m supposed to be; not accepted or loved by myself and in the spaces around me.
So I made this one piece and created a poem that began with “I wanted to feel safe in the spaces we’re meant to.”
And now I write lists constantly of what brings my peace. I have sticky notes everywhere of little activities that I know will bring me that sense of security and that sense of peace that I associate with having a home, a space of my own.
And I take videos of moments that bring out this feeling. I paint pictures of places that I want to sink into. And I’ve realized a lot of the time I’ve been living with one foot out the door. I’m always ready to run away; to drop everything and blow up my life to move on, because I believed that is what made me adventurous. That is what made me a person of substance. I associated settling into a home meant that I could not continue learning.
But now, I’m creating spaces and art that reflect that feeling that I’m searching for. I want to cultivate that feeling for myself without any external validation. I don’t need that house, that apartment to evoke that feeling. I can create that feeling in everything I do.
And I think it’s moving out of this living in my body. I was living as if I was an alien, shunning the human experience. But, there is something to be said about wanting a space of your own and wanting to feel like you have something to come back to that you belong to. Whether that’s in a group or in your own body and accepting yourself as you are.
A lot of these pieces have that nostalgic feel. I’m using a lot of warm colors and creating elements that almost feel like a cozy blanket. Another piece I’m creating is “Stained Sunlight.” I started that from a short story I wrote a few years ago about this man that becomes stained in ink from the words he speaks. And that stemmed from a poem I wrote about an insecurity I held while lying in the sun with a lover. I had this fear that my body reflected the sins I carried and the sun was illuminating the sins and misdeeds and bad characteristics of self onto my skin. This Dorian Grey theory that your sins affect your appearance. The sun then becomes the judge that looms over us and when you step into it, you get to see the truth of who you actually are.
And that fear soon turned into a daydream. There was a time in my life where I feared all of those things and was self-conscious of who I was perceived as. This stained sunlight concept was my metaphor of life as there is an ultimate judgment of how I will be perceived. But, when that turned into a daydream, maybe our wrinkles, our indents, our scars, are just stories of the lives we’ve experienced, and the sun is meant to be our guide to understanding that wisdom. Maybe we become stained with the truth, only the sun has the power of exposing. That the parts that we are so convinced need to be in darkness, are the parts that need the most light.
I guess that’s a very cliche thing, that we assume to stay away from the darkness. Or that the most troubled people need the most love. While you may see that as a cliche, I fully believe it. There is something to be said about the shadows of human nature that we are so quick to shun, so quick to put a label on everyone to identify those shadows. And that creates this feeling of needing to put a label on everything, creating this black and white society where everything has to be identified as something that is good and something as bad. Every action you take needs to be given that label and identified.
We are so sure what we deem as wrong or bad, but those very things change over time. The things we thought were bad are not so bad after all. And that stems into this idea that suffering is an essential part of the growth in human existence. And that’s kind of where I stood when I kept bringing chaos into my life. It was as if I was so bored with being content and having things come to me rather than me suffering through it.
I highly related to the underdog story. I wanted to be the hero of my own story. There was a part of me deep down that thought everything I chose to suffer through, would make a great story one day. And I kept telling myself that and I think I attracted more situations that were uncomfortable or situations that I didn’t need to go through because I wanted to create that story; that inspirational story that makes people go “if she can get through that, I can get through anything.”
And I think, from an ego standpoint, a lot of us feel that way and a lot of us want that. I think that’s why the continuation of suffering is almost so intoxicating. Why would I choose to be content when I can have such an amazing story?
But stories do not have to be rooted in stories. Your success does not have to be rooted in suffering. You do not have to grow as a person through suffering.
Suffering does not equate to success; it just creates more suffering.
We’ve created this collective ideology that everything good is something that we all have to suffer for. The perfect body, the perfect job, the perfect house, all require suffering to prove we are worthy. We assume there is a mountain we need to climb to receive those things, to prove ourselves. And that’s part of the reason why we are so quick to label things. We’ve created this culture that everyone else is other to my experience. If I can identify how they are different from me, I can continue up that mountain and prove myself over them.
In this culture, we assume that there is not enough to go around; that someone needs to be at the bottom of that mountain in order to get to the top.
And I don’t think I agree.
Even with religions and spirituality, there is this sense that the very fabric of these religions is that we are all equal; we all stem from the same source. So, in order to achieve this enlightenment, you have to first believe we are all equal. Which is a complete rebellion against the very foundation of this culture and society that believes we must be chosen and are all different.
And since it’s so deeply rooted, it can be hard to unlearn that. Take money for example. It’s so simple. It’s just this energy that is created to support us, to support our lives. But, we’ve turned it on its head and now we suffer in order to receive something that was created in order to support us. So we work for money, instead of money working for us. So it’s no longer doing the objective that it was designed to do and yet we refuse to identify new solutions for that energy that we wanted to create in the first place.
Money didn’t just happen. It was a long trial and error of divine currencies until we reached money. And I don’t think it’s really working out. I don’t understand why it hasn’t changed (though you could argue that Bitcoin is changing it). We’ve had this trial period for a long time and was originally backed by gold and the system is very clearly no longer working, but we have dug ourselves in our own hole that we refuse to get out of. We are so attached to the idea of suffering; we have to suffer for money instead of creating a new system.
And I know that is idealistic. But, what money is designed to do is not achieving the goal we designed for it. So it is a failed experiment that we should be reevaluating and creating a new one.
And that’s where I’m at with life in general; that it is one big experiment. You should be experimenting with life and trying as many things as possible; internally and externally. And the trick is to experiment without being attached to suffering.
And that’s what I experienced with my living situations. Because I wanted to experiment and see where I can live and try new things, which is great in theory. But, I was so attached to suffering that I kept putting myself in places that were not authentically true to myself and not ideal situations for myself. My brain subconsciously thought, “Okay, you want to keep experimenting with yourself. Well if you keep changing yourself and trying on new identities and new living situations, you’ll have to suffer and start all over again with that chaos to achieve that ideal self.” In short, I would think I had to start at the bottom every time I would experiment with my identity. Which is not true. There is no bottom; it’s just one huge experiment on Earth.
That’s what I choose to believe. We came here to learn or heal or understand things in a new way; just one huge petri dish of human existence. And I was so stuck in this suffering loop and stuck in my mind rather than living in my body or emotions that I couldn’t see what I was actually holding onto or searching for. Over the years, I’ve also learned that for me, that my life is hell.
And I don’t mean that in a dark way. I don’t mean the fiery pit of doom, that this is horrible. Hell for me is just experimentation on Earth, where we have these labyrinths with these looping patterns that we experience. Kind of like Westworld, we get through the maze and unlock a new pattern and experience. I’ve noticed that I get similar experiences and patterns if I don’t consciously work to release them. So life is to uncover our patterns that we are attached to and experiment with unlocking them.
So, this is hell for me. Welcome.
But, a lot of these looping patterns and behaviors that we experience. If you ever feel like nothing ever works out for you, or you keep trying and feel like you are “too” something or “not enough” something, you probably have a suffering mentality. This idea that you have to suffer in order to achieve, to belittle yourself, be the underdog in order to have a story worth telling. We don’t actually need that pattern to survive and thrive here. We don’t need that in order to have a collective that works to support our experiences rather than be of detriment to our experiences.
And I hope to use what I am creating right now as a stepping stone to understanding why I am so attached to suffering and my suffering is rooted in my need for chaos. I haven’t uncovered why I feel that way or where that came from. But, I think when we continue to push ourselves and stretch our bodies and the ways we show up in the world. Whether that be through what we speak on, what we read, create, what we do, I think to stretch ourselves is to push ourselves to the edge and figure out why we are attached to certain things and behaviors. I’m very much a believer that we can all change and are all capable of changing.
Anything you believe about yourself or the world is not something that is set in stone.
If you feel like you’re in this looping pattern of needing to suffer or this scarcity mindset, this fear of your world constantly going to implode; maybe start asking yourself what aspects of yourself do you feel like are the darkest parts or need to hide away from the world. Maybe identify a pattern that seems to keep happening that you don’t understand why they keep popping up. Is it a certain type of person that you keep meeting? Is it like me, not having the best living situations? Is it a certain job or a toxic work environment? Something that seems to keep happening that you feel you have little control over.
Maybe write a list of things that feel safe for you. What is your definition of safety or peace? Something that also helps me is to paint the places I want to be in or painting what feels like safety to me. Or even finding a book that feels that way. I have a lot of safety blanket books. Like On the Road by Jack Kerouac, I take it everywhere I move, because something about that story just brings me peace and safety. Which is ironic because that book is about constantly moving back and forth across the country; maybe that’s where it all started.
Thank you for listening; I’ll talk to you next time.
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