What do we mean, really, with our new COVID-induced catch phrase “stay safe.”?
Keeping it real folks: You are not safe.
Stay safe is what I want to call a “sick” phrase (illuminating the illness in our culture). Staying safe, valuing our lives at all costs, needs to stop being our primary drive as a culture.
Consider exploring/adopting safe enough as a reasonable baseline. Maybe instead of protecting the ME and our specific WE’s, we could adopt the stance of being responsible for the safety of all of life. You know, if anyone is unsafe, none of us are safe.
Maybe it’s time to question our semantics and maybe as a meaningful greeting try “wishing you well”, “stay present”, “ treasure life”…or getting realer, maybe we should try “stay asleep” or “enjoy denial”…as this is what stay safe implies: join me in denying reality. How about answering “How are you?” with “Safe enough my friend, safe enough.”
While safety from truly dangerous circumstances is a basic need, all the gradients of safety are not. We are systematically being trained (AGAIN) to fear each other. We are also being distracted from the fact that the most unsafe aspects of our lives are at our own hand (so yes, maybe we should fear each other, but probably not the each other we are being directed to fear…). Climate collapse has created a stunning lack of safety that we will live with until our extinction or some massive miracles occur.
As we are all in deep with the shifts that are upon us, radical readjustments to our roles, our positions, our realities, even the power of our language, personally and collectively is up for movement—move!
You are not safe. Now what?
To read more on my take on safety go here.
