Security vs. Freedom

When was a time when you felt extremely free? When I was a kid, probably around age eight or nine, my dad sent me back to get our jeep and drive it by myself over to where he was. You see, it was my job to come around and pick up the birds my dad was hunting with our bird dog. Once, I drove through a dangerous area and ripped a hole in the tire. I went from feeling really free to feeling like a failure.

When you do something for the first time, it’s usually an expression of freedom. Things that make us feel free have a sense of adventure and danger associated with them, knowing that something unexpected is probably going to happen. But you do them anyway because the freedom of experimentation and experience is worth it!

My generation is more used to that than current generations. You can see it anytime you log in to Facebook or Instagram, and see those memes about drinking from water hoses, not wearing helmets, not coming home till dinnertime. It was freedom, but there was danger in it—though that didn’t bother us.

Back then, we had very little fear of danger because there was so little reinforcement of that fear. Nowadays the news repeats every bad thing ad nauseum—the scarier the better because scary equals good ratings. Good news doesn’t generate interest, so they save those for the slow news days. You don’t hear good things over and over, but let something bad happen and you’ll hear nothing but that until the next bad thing happens.

Back then, you could trust your neighbors because you interacted with them—you knew them. Now we’re scared of our neighbors because we’ve been taught to distrust everyone and because of that, we don’t get to know one another. You can’t trust and have a relationship with people you don’t know. And thus the fear is reinforced again.

You have to know freedom to know security, but what is ultimate security? That’s different for every person of course. There is security in where we live, what we do for work, our physical and mental abilities. Insecurity is the loss of whatever security you value.

I’m working with a mentee. She’s very smart, and recently had the opportunity to interview for an amazing company. Unfortunately, her whole life she’s heard the message from her parents, “Don’t screw up this opportunity, do you realize how lucky you are?” It’s no surprise then that anytime an amazing opportunity has appeared, she gets physically ill. She feels sick, nervous, upset, and can’t seem to focus on anything else.

But the truth is, she really can’t screw it up. Wherever she is, she’s right where she is supposed to be. Whether she is hired by SpaceX or Google or Apple, or none of those places, she is where she is supposed to be. God will close the door on the places where you’re not supposed to be. I’ve learned that one the hard way. Anytime I pursue something that I have had to make happen myself, it doesn’t work out.

That fear of screwing up disappears when you realize that you’re always exactly where you’re supposed to be. The interview she was preparing for didn’t go well at first. They threw some unexpected questions at her and because of her nerves, she was having trouble problem-solving (something that usually comes easily to her). They could see she was struggling with her nerves so as it went along, they pulled back to more comfortable questions until she calmed down and when that happened, her problem-solving abilities came back and she did really well. She ended up being really comfortable.

Now that she had that experience, whether they hired her or not, she’d learned how to be more comfortable, so it was a success! She didn’t end up getting that job, but that was a good thing, because she ended up in a job that was even more fulfilling than that one would have been. See? She is exactly where she is supposed to be.

For me, ultimate security is knowing who I am, or Whose I am, which ties back to self-awareness. Self-awareness, the awareness that I am a child of God, is both security and freedom, together.