You are not granted any safety.
None at birth, none in life, and none at death.
And what is safety but a deception by the reasoning that says the mind can protect the body with behaviors?
Then how could all deaths but the intentional be surprising?
A failure of an organ.
A high-speed crash.
A car vs. a bicyclist.
A random murder.
A scheduled murder.
A land mine.
A momentary stupidity leading to shallow water blackout.
A drug error leading to high-speed mistakes and daredevil chances.
All those saying no to sugar, yes to bran, no to alcohol, yes to sprouts, no to beef, yes to tofu.
All in the name of safety.
All for preserving their precious viewpoint.
Those with moderation and those obsessed with specifics – like high intensity workouts and marathons, microdosing and cold plunges.
All addictions for proving a way of life – yes, upgrading quality of life perhaps, but at what cost?
All, at the core, bleating against a fear.
Scratching for a sense of safe.
A strange attempt at no death.
Pining for a look of youth when youth has passed and the reminders on the apparatus say ‘a death surprise is headed your way.’
And if you’re unlucky, a debilitation will have you contemplating suicide.
But you, like the animals in nature, always safe until unsafe.
Always alive until not.
Again, what is this thing safety?
It’s a fear out loud at the edges, but a silence and unthought at the middle.
There’s no nucleus about which it could spin.
Like love, it’s an assembly of assumptions with vapor at the root.
Human story placed on unknowable circumstances.
Almost like a palm reader divining something for the sake of something.
Possibility for the sake of amusement.
Safety says, ‘this might happen.’
And the human says, ‘game on.’
‘Now I have the fuel for drama.’
‘I have a foil.’
But safety?
You never had it.
The shark that kills one in 500,000 is the same shark that takes one in 5,000 by heart attack.
Surprise, you’re it.
But did you live the minutes before it well?
Did you play a game that casts strangers as royalty – because they are?
Did you ignore the gnashing dramas because they are just that?
Did you run past the NPCs?
Did you greet the sun, understanding that it might not rise again for you?
Did you find the color orange on a bird you never knew had it?
Did you taste, feel, smell and see one last time?
Or did you insist on a complicated game of safety?
A deceptively relaxing game of denial while the playground waits.
While poisons in the garden are outnumbered by delights.