Insecurity keeps people fresh, alive and adventurous, says Osho
We are trained in wrong ways, otherwise, security is something to be afraid of, and insecurity is something to be rejoiced. What exactly is insecurityIJ It means tomorrow is not going to repeat today. It means tomorrow you may not even be alive. It means that one has to live each moment as if it is the last moment. A life of security will be simply boring. It will be like seeing the same movie again and again — knowing every detail of what is going to happen. You can enjoy a movie only once.
Insecurity is the very fabric of life. If you don’t understand insecurity, you can never understand life. Seasons will change, climates will too, the fall will come and spring will too. Insecurity means that everything will go on changing and nothing can be taken for granted. You want everything to be certain, permanent. But have you ever thought what will be the outcome if everything is permanentIJ You eat the same food everyday, you say the same things everyday and you listen to the same things everyday. There is no death even to demolish this tragic living — you are living in a nightmare.
Insecurity keeps people fresh, alive, adventurous — knowing that things can be changed. Even without changing them, they are going to be changed. So there is great scope for change, for transformation.
As an ancient saying goes, “The authentic man is one whom the sunrise never finds where the sunset leaves him” or “where the sunrise leaves him, the sunset never finds him there.” He is always on the move, he is in the flow...he is not a dirty pond of stagnant water not going anywhere.
But the whole training of our minds is such that we are made afraid of insecurity, and our whole life we are trying for safety. Financially, politically, religiously — in every dimension we want to be secure. But security means death, a living death. It means tomorrow will simply be a repetition of today, and today is a repetition of yesterday.
Are you livingIJ Is there a dance in your lifeIJ Are you moving, growing, risking, taking the challenges of dangerous pathsIJ In the acceptance of danger, in the acceptance that anything can happen any moment, life comes to its best, to its fullest.
Your question is, “lately, I have been feeling very insecure, and I see how much I dislike that space of not knowing.” You are completely upside down. You will have to change your posture. Insecurity is not a space that has to be disliked, it is a space that has to be loved, cherished and celebrated. Tomorrow will bring something new.
And because of the fear of insecurity, you are also fearing not knowing; and not knowing is the highest peak of consciousness. But certainly you must be afraid of peaks because you can fall from there; you prefer the plain, asphalt road — no danger of falling from there. You would like to be at the lowest point in consciousness, because from there you cannot fall.
Millions of people have decided to live at the minimum out of the simple fear that from the maximum you can fall. It is safer to live at the minimum; it is even safer not to live at all. Nobody has ever heard that dead people are insecure; graveyards are the most secure places. Once you enter your grave, there is no fear: even death cannot do anything to you — one cannot die twice.
Man has been trying to create false props for security, knowing perfectly well that they all fall down, but still he goes on piling up props around him. Time does not care about your props, nor does life care about your props. In fact, it is compassionate of nature that whatever you do, you remain insecure. You can have a bank balance, you can have a big insurance — but these are just strategies to befool yourself. What insurance can there be against deathIJ What insurance can there be against the constantly changing flux of lifeIJ You cannot prevent it: it is a mountain river flowing fast, dropping from high mountains into waterfalls, moving into valleys towards the ocean where it will disappear completely.
The idea of safety has created the idea of accumulating knowledge — nothing should be left unknown because the unknown creates insecurity. If it is known, you feel safe.