How to feel safe in an unsafe world
The world can feel frightening right now.
Seeing the devastation of a collapsing glacier in Nepal is an apocalyptic vision. The race for superintelligence is advancing at an extraordinary pace, with a handful of CEOs competing to shape the future of our world.
You are not mistaken in feeling that the world is fragile and not always in safe hands.
The future feels deeply uncertain, and we have very little control over what happens next. Our natural response to uncertainty is often fear. This is completely understandable.
When we feel unsafe, our minds can slip into catastrophic narration, which makes us feel even more unsafe. A loop is formed, and our nervous system moves into fight, flight or freeze. This response is natural. The problem is when we get stuck in survival mode.
But what if your sense of safety doesn’t depend entirely on what is happening around you?
Beneath the frantic need to control the uncontrollable, beneath the overthinking and worrying, there is a quiet space within us, a sense of safety we can return to. We rarely stop for long enough to find it.
Instead, we look outside ourselves for relief.
We keep busy. We seek comfort and distraction. We scroll. We try to make the uncertainty go away.
But there is another possibility.
We can stop and recognise:
In this moment, now, I am safe.
We can breathe deeply and allow ourselves to experience this simple truth. Surrender what we cannot control. Settle into the body and come back to just this. Even for a few moments.
The present moment can provide us with refuge.
It brings us out of the thinking mind and back into our embodied experience. Here, now. Connected to ourselves and the world in simple presence, rather than caught in worry about what might happen next.
And the ways back can be very simple.
A deep breath. A walk in nature. Resting. Connecting with someone we love. Putting down our devices and coming back to our senses. Playing, dancing, creating.
Perhaps feeling safe in an unsafe world is not about convincing ourselves that everything will be okay.
Perhaps it is about discovering that, even when we cannot control what happens next, we can find our way back to ourselves.
Here. Now.
With you,
Maya