Security Is Xed Out

security  n. 1. Freedom from risk or danger; safety

The concept of Security is Xed out every day of our lives. Sometimes in small ways. Sometimes in large.

A young man and young woman save their money and train their bodies. They make the trip to Nepal to scale the highest mountain on Earth. Each of their flights lands safely – no bombs, no terrorists. Their transport to Base Camp arrives safely. The change in altitude causes discomfort, but they adjust.

They consider the dangers. They know they might have to cancel their plans to summit the mountain due to sudden changes in weather, striking Sherpas, or a host of other obstacles both natural and manmade. They take what precautions they can and make contingency plans. They know this trip is anything but safe. They go anyway. That is part of the adventure.

We are at risk from natural phenomena – tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, blizzards, wild fires. The list is long. Some things are predictable and we can take precautions to protect ourselves and our property or be prepared to recover, repair, and replace.

When children go to school, we expect them to be safe. A bus ride to the casinos in the mountains or to a church camp or home from a music competition. These are all expected to be safe. Attending a midnight showing in a movie theater should be safe. Working in a post office or office building, shopping in a convenience store or drug store, and filling our car’s gas tank should be safe. Driving on a modern highway in a well-maintained automobile should be safe. And most of the time safety comes through for them and for us.

Sometime in my childhood I learned to mistrust the concept of security. For many years I sought a religion that could replace that lost security. I found lots of reassuring stories and scary stories. I found generous people who professed belief and intolerant people who demanded belief. There were beautiful costumes and simple, grand buildings and austere, and all kinds of music. But no security.

Then somewhere along the line, I discovered that a sense of security is not necessary for me. It is exhilarating to explore life and love people free of the need for a secure future. It’s part of the adventure.

November 22, 1963 -- November 22, 2013

 President Kennedy's Grave

with the Lincoln Memorial in the background

 

   I knew this year would be worse than last year or eleven years ago or forty-three years ago. I knew the media would fill the days leading to my birthday with questions and comments and constant reprise of the Zapruder film. That's right. My birthday.
   Sometimes Thanksgiving falls on my birthday, but the anniversary of President Kennedy's murder always falls on my birthday.
   November 22, 1963, my sixteenth birthday. My world was already dangerous. We were in the middle of the Cold War. My best friend's father had flown in the Berlin Airlift several years before and we had been afraid a Third World War would start then. President Kennedy had threatened the Soviet Union if they did not remove their missiles from Cuba. And we had been afraid of nuclear war then. Women's magazines had recipes and diets and articles about home bomb shelters. We had tornado drills at school and bomb drills.
   Fear was already a backdrop for my life. But like other almost-sixteen-year-olds, backdrops are just that. Mind catching each time they change, but quickly moved to the background as the activities of  life took center stage. And each time the scary moment passed, somehow my sense of security was recovered and all the dangers of the world receded.
   And then a man murdered President Kennedy. An English-speaking, white American whom I would not have recognized as different from my neighbors or me had I met him on November 21, 1963. And he did it in Dallas, Texas, a city more like my Oklahoma City than any other major American city. It was too close to home. It would not recede into any background.
   The murder of President Kennedy was the end of my sense of security, just as Pearl Harbor must have been the end of my parents' and the murder of President Lincoln must have been for Walt Whitman's generation and the burning of Washington, D.C., must have been for the young people of the War of 1812.
   Each of us must surely come to the realization that the concept of 'security' is false. That the concept of ideal is illusion. For me it came with the assassination of JFK. For my son it was probably the Oklahoma City bombing. For my daughter, fifteen years younger than my son, it was September 11. I don't know what it will be for my grandchildren, but it will surely happen. And the event will be just as shocking and just as threatening. It will not recede into a backdrop but become the next layer of tragedy on which our human condition rises.
   For every tragedy that reminds us how fragile and flawed we humans are, there are countless triumphs. The English burned our capital city, but with each generation we come closer to achieving a class-free society. And truly, so do those English and the rest of the world. President Lincoln was murdered and freedom and equality for all may have been delayed, but with each generation we come closer. And Pearl Harbor did not begin the end of human civilization, but began the end of another in the list of tyrants who would subjugate humanity. A long list that each generation faces.
   I gave up on security and ideals a long time ago. Fifty years ago, to be precise. But I do not give up on humanity. And hope is a great replacement for security.