Harbor

The concept of the safe harbor appears throughout literature. At the height of the powerful British Empire, the safe harbor in literature was often a small country house away from the fray of commerce and world travel. In ancient Rome, great political men, like Cicero, happily retired to quiet villas away from the hub of that ancient world.

Most of humanity live their lives without any safe harbor. In fact, those in power with the capacity to establish their own safe harbors fight viciously to prevent the social change that would make all the world a safe harbor for all humanity. They rail against 'class warfare' whenever the people assert their need for safety and security from poverty and injustice. The beaten masses shrink from the concept of class warfare because they have been made weak by perpetual mind wash of media propaganda.

There is no safe harbor in self-deception or complacency. Denial increases vulnerability to preventable catastrophe. Self-satisfaction breeds stifling stagnation.

I find meditation and reflection are methods of building an internal safe harbor from which I can journey into the travails of my environment. By maintaining mindfulness of my own state of being, I am better able to feel a basic confidence in my ability to cope and create as my life progresses through my own causes and circumstances over which I have absolutely no control. While my mind remains anchored in its own safe harbor, I am able to sail the tricky waters of mortal reality.