By Mark Antony Rossi
Each of us can point out a person we know who lives their life without restraint. Most times we tell them right to their faces, “man, there’s a price for reckless decisions.” Quite true, but are we just worried about the price we must pay to bail them out of trouble. The motivations for the lecture don’t exactly sound selfless.
As I have grown older (and a bit wiser) I noticed people so gun-shy of gaffes that they become obsessive with safety in all areas of their lives. It’s one thing to insist on wearing a seat belt and quite another to never venture beyond your basic fears. While fear is healthy, even natural, it should not serve as raw lumber for a self-imposed prison.
The gritty truth of guarding your heart: walls built prevent darkness and sunlight from entering your life. Over the course of time I’ve witnessed people who live yet don’t have lives. They are too busy surviving the day and forfeit the living moments that constitute a day. This is where safety kills the soul one deferred decision at a time.
Risk is not inherently bad if it doesn’t involve physical harm. Safety frequently tranquilizes emotionally and psychologically because decent people become immobilized from the trauma of past experience. Family and friends attempt to be sensitive and supportive; however, that person never moves into the present. They are trapped in a twilight zone of unreality and eventually elevate Safety to a semi-organized religion of one.
What can be done when encountering these tormented folks? My strong recommendation is cast aside mindless sensitivity and engage the person like any other human being. If you are loud by nature be loud. If you are soft spoken by nature be yourself. Only human engagement has a chance to reach these disconnected souls and bring them back to the communal fold. Anything less reinforces their excessive precautions which are a form of paranoia. In the final analysis, your happiness may very well depend on the smallest acts of kindness. Forget Karma. Remember your Humanity.
About the Author: Mark Antony Rossi is a poet, playwright and author of the bioethics volume “Dark Tech” now available from Amazon. His most recent plays have been produced in Liverpool and New York.
http://ethical-stranger.webnode.com/