there’s no safety

We are all familiar with the vicious cycle of worry. We know that worrying is futile, but we go on doing it because calling it futile does not stop it. We worry because we feel unsafe, and want to be safe. Yet it is perfectly useless to say that we should not want to be safe. Calling a desire a bad name does not get rid of it. What we have to discover is that there’s no safety, that seeking it is painful, and that when we imagine we have found it, we don’t like it. In other words, if we can really understand what we are looking for – that safety is isolation, and what we do to ourselves when we look for it – we shall see that we do not want it at all. No one has to tell you that you should hold your breath for ten minutes. You know you can’t do it, and the attempt is most uncomfortable.

The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan W. Watts.