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It is good to let a little instability into our lives, now and then. Most of our greatest artists, writers, and actors have been people with tormented minds. A little chaos, can enrich ones life, used sparingly, like a little tabasco sauce adds flavor to food, but overused, can start a five alarm fire in your mouth.
Youth is the time for experiencing the rich diversity of life, with all its ups and downs. One shouldn't shy away from risk, when young. One must embrace passion and live life to the fullest, before, as the Persian poet and lover of wine, Omar Khayyam, said,"The cup runs dry." To fully appreciate ones youth, one must risk hurt. To retreat, in fear, from the dark side of life, is to squander ones youth. Those who don't experiment, and face their fears, never know what real freedom feels like. The most important freedom is that of the mind. The things which limits us most is our own fear and inhibitions. In that sense we are our own worst enemy. Many of us are afraid to risk intimacy, because we fear that if we get to close to someone they will hurt us. This is particularly true for those of us who experience abandonment, either emotionally, or physically, as children from our parents. Needs which weren't met as children, we seek to fill through our mates. We are forever seeking someone to fill the aching hunger in our hearts for the love we feel we can never have, and perhaps feel we don't deserve.
Those of us who have experienced instability, and inconsistency, from our loved ones, frequently, long for those who are unstable, to connect with someone who will empathize with us. Perhaps we are so adapted to a life of instability that we don't know how to relate to those whose life runs smoothly. Like a drug addict, we become addicted to the roller coaster ride. We feel that only the slightly, or extremely, mad, will understand us. Yet our deepest needs remain, unsatisfied, by the fickle support and lack of commitment we get from these troubled souls.
The answer isn't to close up and hide in our shell. The answer isn't to seek total stability and the stagnant peace and security it brings. As the philosopher, Alan Watts, once said, there is wisdom in insecurity. To be completely secure is to be closed off from the world. One doesn't stay cloistered in ones house for fear of crime or natural disaster. If one approaches the world with arms open, receptive to what it has to offer, without expectations, one will have the opportunity for fulfillment. To fully experience the joy of life, one must always be open to its possibilities. To approach people without preconceived ideas, to let go of the emotional baggage, and fly free, is the greatest ecstasy one can know. In order to experience life's deepest pleasures one must be willing to accept its pain. To transcend the our deepest fear, that of death, is to find ones center. Through breaking out of the shackles of fear and despair we escape the surly bonds of our limited perspective and allow ourselves to soar to heights of fulfillment undreamed of in our waking hours.
"Is there a different truth to life than what I know?" Kaila, The Mud People.