Extracted from the article “The Real Meaning of Security” by Eve Ensler for Ode Magazine.*
Our obsession with protecting ourselves makes us less safe. That’s the message from Eve Ensler, who travels the globe to end violence against women.
I am worried about our single-minded focus on security. I see this word, hear this word, feel this word everywhere. Real security. Security check. Security watch. Security clearance. Why has all this focus on security made me feel so much more insecure? What does anyone mean when they speak of security? Why are we suddenly a nation and a people who strive for security above all else? In fact, security is essentially elusive, impossible. We all die. We all get sick. We all get old. People leave us. People surprise us. People change us. Nothing is secure. And this is the good news. But only if you are not seeking security as the point of your life.
Here’s what happens when security becomes the center of your life. You can’t travel very far or venture too far outside a certain circle. You can’t allow too many conflicting ideas into your mind at one time as they might confuse you or challenge you. You can’t open yourself to new experiences, new people, and new ways of doing things. They might take you off course. You cling desperately to your identity – you become a strict Christian or a Muslim or a Jew. You are an Indian, an Egyptian, an Italian or an American. You are heterosexual or homosexual or you never have sex. At least that’s what you say when you identify yourself. You become part of an us and, in order to be secure, you must defend against them.
You become your nation, you become your religion, you become whatever it is that will freeze you, numb you and protect you from change or doubt. But all this shuts down your mind. In reality, you are not one drop safer. A meteor could fall from the sky, a tsunami could rise up from the sea, someone could fly a plane through your building. All this striving for security has in fact made you much more insecure. Because you must watch out all the time. There are people who are not like you, people you now call enemies. There are places you cannot go, thoughts you cannot think, worlds you can no longer inhabit. So you spend your days fighting things off, defending your territory and becoming more entrenched in your fundamental thinking. Your days become devoted to protecting yourself. This becomes your mission. This is all you do. You find ways to get as much money as you can and food and oil and everything else you need to be safe. You take these things from other people if you have to and devise new ways to do that. You invent security systems to check pockets and IDs and bags. Every object becomes a potential weapon. I travel a lot and every time I am in an airport there is a new security threat – one week it’s tweezers, the next week it’s rubber bands.
Of course now you can no longer feel what another person feels because that might shatter your heart, confuse your basic thinking, destroy the whole structure. Ideas get shorter – they become sound bites. There are evildoers and saviours. Criminals and victims. Those who are not with us are against us. It gets easier to hurt people because you do not feel what’s inside them. It gets easier to lock them up, humiliate them, occupy them, invade them, kill them. They are merely obstacles to your security.
But all of this offers only a false sense of security. Real security means contemplating death, not pretending it doesn’t exist. It means not running from loss, but feeling it, surrendering to sorrow, entering grief.
(…)
Something happened when I began to travel. I got lost. I became uprooted in time and space. I became a permanently displaced person. At first it was terrifying, not knowing who I was or where I was. Then I realized that we are all essentially displaced people, all of us are refugees, we came from somewhere – and we are hopefully travelling all the time (even if we never leave our rooms), moving toward a new place. Freedom means I may not be identified as part of any one group, but that I can visit and find myself in every group. Freedom does not mean I don’t have values or beliefs. But it does mean I am not hardened around them. I do not use them as weapons.
Freedom means not being owned, not occupied, not bought.
Freedom means finding the place in me that connects with every person I meet rather than thinking of myself as different, better or on top.
(…)
Freedom is about being vulnerable to one another, realizing that our ability to connect is more important than feeling secure, in control and alone.
* Eve Ensler is an American writer, most well-known for her performance work The Vagina Monologues, V-Day (www.vday.org), the global movement to end violence against women and girls, and her upcoming national tour of The Good Body (www.thegoodbody.org). This text is adapted from a talk she gave at the TED: Technology, Entertainment, Design conference in Oxford, England last July.
Polyamory is the desire, practice, or acceptance of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved, and is sometimes described as consensual, ethical, or responsible non-monogamy.
Sensual awakening releases the most intense energy and source of physical comfort and happiness there is. Nothing (even drugs?) can release tension and stress and improve your well being like sexual satisfaction.
I appreciate a deeper level of sensual connection. An intense sensual awakening that only happens when lovers trust each other and are engaged in discovering what pleasures them the most, and what pleasures their lover.