Life's Real Insurance : Be Present

As insurance giant AIG goes down to yet another financial body blow (it's all over the news these days) I'm tempted to speculate about security. We have Homeland Security, Social Security, the Securities Commission for all those bonds that seem to be worth less every day, and even the security of insurance and even of life insurance. It seems as if we are, in the West, obsessed with security in one form or another.

We have so much 'security' yet the most common complaint of people heading to the psychiatrist's office is a sense of insecurity.

Fear is still big in the USA.But buying insurance doesn't make it go away.

So, wouldn't it be important to note that we have almost no security at all, in real terms? Two weeks ago, for example, a friend of mine keeled over from a brain aneurism. He was, they told me, dead before he hit the floor. A quick exit, and one we could all envy to some extent, except that he was barely 50. I'm sure all his insurance was paid up, for his life, his home, his business, his pension, and so on.

The point is that we seek to make life 'safe' when the essential nature of life is that it is not safe, at all. Quite the opposite. And perhaps it's only when we recognize how quirky and odd and downright risky life truly is that we can begin, at last, to be fully present to the glories of the passing moment.

So by all means be responsible and pay your insurance premiums - but don't let any of that turn you into a fearful or a timid person. That's the way of the Orphan archetype, and we are capable of far more than that.