Sailing determinedly in all our seas of tranquility is the vessel that invades our lives suddenly, robbing us of joy and raping our confidence. Whether you think you are too together to experience insecurity or whether you are so insecure, you would rather dismiss the anticipated rhetoric, I urge you to continue reading. I assure you, you will be surprised where this journey will take you.
I used to think insecurity was the weak willed, high-pitched, mousy, acne-laden, greasy haired ick that did not speak loud enough to be heard the first time and would not look you in the eye. While I did not consider myself insecure, each time I heard the word it rang with a note of familiarity that I could not quite explain. One Sunday morning, in a brief conversation, a friend unknowingly set my sail on a journey that eventually anchored me in the harbor of contentment. I want to share with you what the journey taught me.
Today I would describe myself as an average guy. I am not overtly feminine. Neither do I put on macho airs. That day my friend and I had been discussing the probability of a mutual acquaintance making stereotypical assumptions about me because I do not try to exaggerate masculinity. She had commented that she could see how I would be intimidated by the false assumptions he might make about me. I was still pondering her remark when a summons to her for some important task elsewhere aborted the conversation. I did not see her at church again before she and her husband moved away so I never told her she was mistaken.
A consistent dictionary definition of security is something along the lines of the absence of fear. So, insecurity is the presence of it. After a lot of meditation and scripture study, I concluded my fellow church member’s assumption that I would feel insecure about what our acquaintance might think of me was a wrong one. I realized I could not have cared less about any false assumptions our mutual acquaintance made about me. I feared, however, that person being aware of the truth, which was that I think he had an enviable body for a regular non-bodybuilder. Contrary to what many think and feel, insecurity is not a hazy, undefined fear of what if; rather, it is one of the disclosure of very real facts.
