Safety is a wonderful thing. I want to be safe, I want my family and loved ones to be safe. Heck, I’d love for the whole world to be a safe place. However, like many, many things, at some point, both the Law of Diminishing Returns and the Law of Unexpected Consequences kick in. Paradoxically, the greatest of all risks can be to attempt to avoid all risk.

Micro-aggressions?  The world is full of slights and the more you look for them, the more you will find and your world will be the less for it.

Safe Places? If by that you mean a place where you don’t have to hear opinions of others, well, I have news for you, there is someone out there who’s idea of a safe place is not hearing your opinion.

Unconscious Basis? Humans tend to like folks like themselves, people with similar backgrounds. We tend to think taller people are more competent, and attractive people are more competent. The list goes on and on. People tend to be much more irrational in their decision making, engage in more emotional reasoning than they’d like to admit.

The greatest security can be in learning how to deal effectively with difficult, even risky or potentially unsafe situations. Coddling people, training people to be weaker versions of themselves or attempting to shelter folks from the realities of life is one the WORST things you can do if you are trying to help.

Closing Quotes

“There is no safety in numbers…or in anything else.” – James Thurber, 1894-1961

“If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn, 1930-2009

“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.” – Charles “Chuck” Michael Palahniuk, b. 1962

“It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win.” – John Paul Jones. 1747-1792, “I have not yet begun to fight.”

“If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.”  ― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book, b. 1960

For more on the subject I refer you to the Atlantic article on ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier