Safe PlaceMore good stuff from Everything That Remains, this time from pages 114 and 115.

We hold on to jobs we dislike because we believe there’s security in a paycheck. We stay in shitty relationships because we think there’s security in not being alone. We hold on to stuff we don’t need, just in case we might need it down the road in some nonexistent, more secure future.  If such accoutrements are flooding our lives with discontent, they are not secure.  In fact, the opposite is true. Discontent is uncertainty.  And uncertainty is insecurity. Hence, if you are not happy with your situation, no matter how comfortable it is, you won’t ever feel secure.

It turned out that my paychecks made me feel less secure, afraid I’d be deprived of the income I’d grown accustomed to and the lifestyle I’d blindly coveted. And my material possessions exposed countless twinges of insecurity, leaving me frightened that I’d suffer loss of personal property or that someone would take it from me. So I clutched tighter onto those security blankets. But it’s not the security blanket that ensures a person’s security. People latch onto security blankets because there’s a deeper fear lingering at the ragged edges of a discontented reality; there’s something else we’re afraid of. The fear of loss. We’re afraid of losing love or respect or comfort.

A lot of irony here I think. Interesting how it’s easy to think more money will make us feel more secure and yet in this case it was covering up the real issues.