Dear not-so-lost-star:

My thoughts: yesterday after communicating with you about anxiety and safety, I watched a herd of elk feeding in front of my house. The elk in the middle of the herd were not watching for danger, being comforted by having elk all around them, feeling safer in the middle. The elk on the outside of the herd were watchful at times, raising their heads, turning their heads around, looking for possible danger. Then they returned to feeding. Eventually I stepped outside slowly, they all looked up, the elk in the middle and those on the outside, watching, alert, nobody eating, and they all walked away and disappeared into the woods.

In nature and in humans, there is no such thing as safety. We are born to be alert to danger. Danger is part of life. There is no such thing as safe. There is such a things as safer.

We can only increase our chances of being safer, but not be safe. We can be safer.

It is very easy for a human to become anxious (ongoing fear), it doesn’t take much to scare a child repeatedly. And parents often do just that, as did your father. Aggression scares us.

Your insight is excellent as I understand it this way: your individual safety became tied with your father not exploding in anger, being calm. How do you know if you are safer? If your father is calm, you are safer. He is your barometer of safety, how you measure your safety. And you learned that certain behaviors on your part will contribute to him being calm, and so, there is something you can do to be safer.

Away from your father on this trip, you are away from the barometer, the instrument measuring your safety (your father), you can’t see if he is calm so you don’t know if you are safe.

It is as if in the center of your life there is your father. If he is calm, you are safer. If he is angry, you are in danger. And this is almost… all that you know regarding your safety in this world.

On this trip, look around, see and take in more of the world. Your father is one person in billions of people. There is much more to the world than your father in it. Of course, you know it. Know it better, know it more. Know it on a deeper level, look around in a different way, consider what you didn’t consider before.

anita