You may frequently hear forms of the word ‘safety’ fall from my lips. We have all been told, “Safety first!”
While it does regularly make the top of people’s priority list, including my own, for me it is part of being a caring, loving, kind, considerate, compassionate person. We have to make safety explicit because it literally cannot be assumed to be valued equally or mean the same thing to everyone.
I find that when I am emphasizing safety then disagreeable folks push back that nothing is ever 100% safe. Absolutely true. While we cannot eliminate harm or danger, it feels white unsafe to behave as if it is impossible to mitigate or minimize. Maximizing safety means maximizing trust, joy, happiness, glee, laughter, etc. Knowing safety is being maximized helps people relax, learn, laugh, and problem-solve, myself included.
I’d like to live a long time, travel, meet my children and grandchildren.
I’ve found that whether I list safety or love first on my values or priorities, somebody will be uncomfortable. Rest assured, safety will always be in my mind. In the current state of human affairs, every adult, parent, leader or organizer of even a birthday gathering needs to consider the safety environment for guests and minors.
This is NOT to stir any measure of paranoia or unnecessary alarm. The reality of expanded government actions to rank, erase, deny and reject various categories of human beings is undeniable. U.S. government entities have withheld state and federal documents such as drivers licenses and passport, erased words like ‘diversity,’ ‘gay,’ and ‘transgender’ from state and federal records, and excluded women, nonstraight, and transgender people from certain roles of government agencies or terminated their employment. Families are left without incomes, healthcare, housing and general safety seeking to flee their state or country.
Safety and freedom are related. Those who are not safe are certainly not free. Safety means being free from fear, free from poverty, free from hunger, free from joblessness, free from being bullied, free from all of the negative stuff and free to all the positive stuff.
There is always a balancing act. Someone else’s free speech can become a violation of another’s freedom from fear. One’s words alone can incite harm and they can lead to even more harm, violence and death, which is all too common.
Conflict is common, normal and necessary. Conflict or disagreement can be healthy and is required for improvements. Our skills and willingness to remain open throughout the communication in conflict are important. Taking breaks when one becomes disregulated is important and often undervalued. What becomes unsafe is when people are inconsiderate of others or when conflict escalates or becomes predictably common.
Any single act of violence is too much, too common, too unacceptable. May we be on this journey of increasing safety even as we engage difficult topics.
