Some people will never be safe. To be safe is a huge luxury. This is to all the ways one can be safe. Food. Shelter.
Peace.
Peace is perhaps the highest form of safety. I usually hate models. I generally think most psychological models are a gross oversimplification to the point of harm. But here, let me pull Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:
I view all of these as forms of safety, though “safety” is contained within this model. That refers to physical shelter and being far from danger. For those who haven’t seen this (almost nobody), this model states that you first need to meet your body’s physical needs (food, water, elimination), then you must be far from danger. After this, you seek connection. Once you have connection, you require self esteem. Only then can you reach self-actualization on top of this.
This is, of course, extremely esoteric. I am not some intellectual to bring this model. However, allow me to be a hypocrite for a moment there and propose a sixth layer of this pyramid: Peace.
I mean the type of peace where the late night thoughts are replaced with calm and content. Where you do not worry. Where you understand there will be challenges, but they can be overcome. Where you understand days will be hard; you will certainly cry again in your life. Yet you know you will be alright.
This, I would argue, is only possible after you have all these things. And to have these things is to be beyond blessed.
How do you get these things? I would see my post from April of last year titled “win slowly”. It is hard to believe it has been a year since I started this blog. So much has changed. So much WAS changing in real time when I started it. It feels like a small eternity – my life before 2024 feels like a distant past, almost a story more so than reality. Yet tonight, after a month absence from the blog, I was up and realized I felt peace. Not only did I realize I felt it, I realized I have been feeling it. For a long time. I think that is winning. I think I have won slowly.
There was a time when my life was constant anxiety. I still remember that. Now, it feels impossible to feel that way. Sometimes my brain tries. It tries to cling to the idea that things are unstable. It wants to return to what it knows as the baseline.
But I no longer need to try to silence it. It silences itself.
Because it knows I am safe. In all six levels of the pyramid.
And come the day that I am not, we shall tackle that too.