Got security?

So as I'm rethinking the last six months and what I knew or believed I knew about my last relationship ending - and asking myself if I can make it work a second time around, I have been thinking a lot about trust. In that second chance, how could I trust this person again? How could I trust my own feelings?

How could I have clarity - when I was so 'wrong' the first time?

I even wondered - how could I be as carefree and audacious as I was early in our relationship, when now I don't know if I can trust his feelings? my own feelings? How can I trust that it's authentic and not some romanticized idea in my Harlequin Romance-warped head?

Last week, my younger brother told me not to focus too much on trust and security -- because no one can make any guarantees. And our striving for trust and security can in fact send us on a rollercoaster of insecurity, anxiety and baggage-driven moments.

Anyway, his point was that there is no security in life. I've heard this assertion repeatedly in the Buddhist passages and books I've read the last several months. About how looking for security is a futile effort.


Our only security is within ourselves - and our security grows in direct proportion to how little reassurance we require from sources outside ourselves.


The only way we're ever going to feel secure is when we recognize that security is a childish dream that will never come true - and, when we're okay with that notion, only then will we feel any semblance of security.

I have to admit, that notion sucks - only because it seems so hard to achieve! Isn't that what so many of us are seeking? yearning for? something to make it better, give us ground under our feet? tell us it'll all be OK?


We may not like that idea, and as much as it goes against my romantic girlhood dreams, I really believe it's true. Because I've never found security beyond my own soul. It's a hard reality of life to think that in those ways, it's all up to us - but it's very freeing to believe, at the same time.


If security can't be guaranteed, then we should only expect life to change. To surprise us. To smack us upside the head and rearrange the building blocks of our soul in ways we never anticipated.

So, it's not just death and taxes that are guaranteed. It's the inability to find your security in anyone else that is a given.

The question is - can we trust ourselves enough to be without that security, without that ground under our feet, and then do the hard work to forge our souls to give us all that we need?