Is playing it safe making the world less safe?
Why we should not copy what has always been done and navigate on a different path.
Great projects are not created out of comfort.
I was walking through one of Paris most unpopular areas, metro station Stalingrad - the one I was told not to get out at. (On a side note, I am wondering why the underground in Paris sounds like dark places considering another is called Oberkampf, a German word meaning something like “upper battle”.) Anyway, coming back to that particular day I was walking down the road with a bag of Pain au Chocolat in one hand and a handwritten card tucked away in my bag. Twenty minutes later I was ringing the bell of a studio door, looking like Santa Clause ready to distribute gifts. I was on a mission to get in touch with a pioneering company transforming old clothes into fascinating interior design pieces. Kind approaches open doors - so here I was a few weeks later on a private tour through their production site, discovering how waste turns into valuable furniture that might be considered art.
I have written quite a few articles on volunteering at the French border. It was the first time I encountered truly life threatening circumstances for people, that were not created by nature or unstable conditions but much more caused by humans perfectly capable of preventing suffering. For some, it might be debatable, whether European politicians have the means and power to save lives at EU borders, but I firmly believe if there would be a will there would be a way.
Many of my experiences over the past months have led me to one question that has been lurking in my mind for years. The longer I embrace the steps I truly feel like taking, the more this question resurfaces.
Is playing it safe making the world less safe?
Playing it safe means following a life path that is not shaped by my own desires but predominantly a societal pressure to achieve what the norm in our capitalistic and status-driven world has marked as success. It mostly refers to a career path or relationship status, which in sum make up a great amount of our life.
It holds us back from living up to our potential and mostly misses to bring the safety intended. It makes us too adjusted to one certain direction and lacks the important training of flexibility and adapting. The confidence built from it is based on external achievements and is directed only at specific areas rather than a holistic trust in our abilities that we can navigate through life regardless of what comes.
Society does not teach us how to navigate on our own. This is the reward we receive, when we give it our best shot. The uncomfortable path, because what playing it safe is offering is mostly neither pleasing nor does it tackle the many challenges our world is facing. It is foremost copying the life of others without ensuring first that it is something we truly align with. And this does truly lead into the wrong direction, just have a look at our world.
Our world is in desperate need of action. Exposing ourselves to the uncomfortable experiences and feeling deeply for the path we are on, can make a true difference. It requires asking ourselves which value we want to bring into the world. It means teaching ourselves the skills we believe would feel true to our nature and not making it dependent on a degree or outer approval.
The safe path leads many to work for companies that cause more harm than good in the world. Besides devastating results for equality and environment, feeling unfulfilled is common when dedicating our time to filling out spreadsheets through which only the corporations get richer. How often do we feel like we do not have time for the things we truly like? From a young age on we were conditioned to believe that working for someone else and accumulating materialistic wealth will lead to personal value. We were also told taking our time equals laziness and anything away from this path of performance gets titled as a break, gap or phase of chaos. Well, we can not find out what we want if we do not lean back for a bit or explore the unknown.
Our environment depends on the smart choices we make. Rethinking the way we consume, away from supermarket shelves offering thousands of products we do not need and the urge to increase our possessions. Politics depend on leaders who have real life experiences rather than having spent years in libraries and lecture halls surrounded by clones of themselves. And most and foremost the common conception that the people in charge will solve the issues we see today, is just a way to not live up to our own responsibility. In a community the sum of all its members count.
Feeling stuck on a road we did not choose ourselves will ultimately shape the way we feel in our own skin and interact with others. It trickles down to a wider picture of society, a group of people unable to make up their own mind and in need of others to take decisions.
To provide some inspiration, may the words of Ami Vitale, photographer and filmmaker, in an episode of The Nature Of lead as an example.
Also the YouTube short documentary What happened to JacksGap has left me amazed and full of energy to tackle the things my heart desires.
That’s it for today. Would love to hear what you think.