Security Is Overrated

Brave women have known this forever.

I’m thinking lately about our human tendency to tell ourselves (and advise others) to “make the best” of things . . . to “accept” life circumstances that haven’t turned out exactly as planned . . . to “settle” for solid, but less than ideal situations, or to “put up with” selfish or irksome people because well, they’re family or part of a group we’re in.

As we age, we adopt this theory of settling — as if it’s a good thing — so we can abdicate the grueling self-responsibility and very hard work it takes to live a life of non-settling. We call it “growing up,” or “being realistic,” or sometimes we convince ourselves to settle by telling ourselves lies like, “My wife would come unglued without me,” or “My parents would be so disappointed if I did x, y, or z.” Or, “It’s better/safer/more financially sound to keep the devil you know — in work, love, a house, or even a hair style, rather than risk change.”

We can call it whatever we want, but when we settle, most of the time what it really is, is cowardice.

We’re either too afraid or too lazy to do what it takes to effect change in our lives. We settle for mediocrity because well, it would take a lot of work and hard conversations to be real. To show up for real. To get messy or uncomfortable or upset the collective apple cart.

When we settle, we know it inside even if we deny it outside. But settling seeps out. We break out in an inexplicable rash, gain weight, drink too much, spend too much, lose sexual desire, stop laughing, or get mind-numbing headaches.

If you’re like most humans, when you encounter an obstacle, you all too often stop in your tracks.

Your husband doesn’t want you to go the movies without him, so you settle for company when you’d rather be alone. Your boss asks you to fudge an expense report, so you settle for compromising your ethics so you can keep your job. You settle for crumbs in relationships lovers, friends, or family, when you (and everybody else) deserves nothing short of a full-on table-full of baguettes, rustic round loaves, croissants, and strudels.

Settling requires you to give up on being you in imperceptible and soul-snuffing ways.

You stifle your sexuality. You tamp down your joy. You find yourself eroded little by little by the slings and arrows of just getting through the day, or by someone else’s rules, egomania, temper tantrums or even just subtle selfishness until one day you wake up and find you’ve settled your soul away.

Of course I know, practically speaking, that we all settle and make the best of some moments, some days, even some years, but unless you want to wake up on the wrong side of 70 and realize that you settled away some of the healthiest, easiest years of your life, you’ve got to resist settling. Resist it with every fiber of your being.

There’s a difference between appearing to settle and truly settling. Sometimes we have to stay in a job because it pays the bills, for example. So, we appear to settle but what we’re really doing is staying course, because while we show up every day from 9-5, we’re working overtime at night sending out resumes by the dozens.

Most often we settle because we’re afraid. As if fear could kill us.

“I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.” — Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

The poet Mary Oliver, sexually abused as a child and suffering from nightmares for years after, crafted a singing, joyous life centered around solitary walks in nature. When she wrote of our “one wild and precious life,” do you think she meant to write, “our one wild and precious and settled-for life?”

Helen Keller wrote, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

Deaf. Dumb. Blind. Where does such bravery come from?

It comes from not settling. It comes from knowing that there is no such thing as keeping the status quo in the journey of your life. It comes from knowing thatwhile our past can never be undone, our future can be a sublime experience of our own design and making.

All the settling in the world can’t keep you safe. And it certainly won’t keep you alive.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable. — Helen Keller

When we settle, we get to not be lonely. We get to have more money. We get to keep our family together. We get to concentrate on our careers or our hobbies. We get to not have to work too hard. We get to have manicures. We get to have someone else mow the lawn, do the dishes, move the heavy furniture, or cook meals for us every night We get to not be scared.

But if all those “gets” are because we settled in serious ways, we also get the very unwelcome result of not being true to ourselves. Which is very unsettling indeed.

Only very recently I’ve come to realize that there is no “settled” when you settle for something less than what your heart yearns for. There is no “settled” when you settle away the simplest and truest parts of yourself.

For a long time I chased security, and I settled my ass off in the process. I wanted to be married, make a home with someone, plant a cactus or tree in the yard and know that I would be there to watch it grow for decades.

But as I enter the last few decades of my life, I’m thinking, yeah, you know what? Fuck that noise.

I’ve decided to never settle for second rate, second best, or second status. Not now. Not ever. And even if my life looks in any way like I’ve settled . . . I’m sure of one thing: I’ve got a plan. And I’m working it.

I won’t measure success in the outcomes. I’ll measure it in the persistent effort.

Effort is something I learned a lot about recently when I read A Pearl in the Storm, the memoir of Tori Murden McClure — the first woman to row alone across the ocean. (A thrilling story — you should read it!)

This was a woman who threw security, safety, caution — all to the wind — in her grueling, exhilarating, relentless, and ennobling pursuit of self-realization. Of doing what she was meant to do and being who she was meant to be. It was a breathtaking tale.

She included a quote in her book that I’d never read before and that she didn’t source or credit:

“The pathway to enlightenment is through the room with a thousand demons.”

The women I’ve referenced here didn’t flinch from their rooms full of demons. They learned one Braille symbol at a time. They exorcised the cruelty of sexual violation by opening themselves up to nature. They pushed their bodies across canyons and mountaintops and rowed across oceans.

All so they could be who they were. Truly. Madly. Deeply.

No settling. No making the best of bullshit. No excuses.

Damn, girls. Where do I sign up?

Thank you to all who have recently signed up for paid subscriptions! I really appreciate having the support as I forge my own (not quite as death-defying as some of the women noted above) version of “not settling!”

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