Emotional Security, Key to Rehumanising Human Beings
(Original)

Silvi Syah Putri Lubis
(Age 24, Indonesia <Living in Singapore>)

"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."
- Buddha

I still remember a conversation I had with my father one night in his house in Medan, Indonesia. It was one beautiful conversation among lots that we had every night since I was 12. It was beautiful for it was natural and involved a person I always looked up to in my life, my grandmother. Papa told me that grandma was once a very poor woman with 7 children. But she had more than that amount depended on her. She had many relatives who stayed in her tiny house. And for this poor family, it meant they had to share the little amount of food that they had with the "guests." Papa told me that he and his siblings often ended up eating the hard burnt rice silently in the kitchen for the rice that their mother cooked for them was served to the guests. "But we did it happily," he told me, once he saw me staring blankly at him in a few seconds. "Because we felt secured. When you feel secured, you feel contented with what you have, you are fearless, and you feel free," he explained. And now, when I am 24, staying alone in a country I do not belong to, and being asked about my vision of a peaceful world, I keep thinking about what my father once shared with me, the story from my grandmother, a story about emotional security.

Why one need to be secured emotionally? Isn't to empathise with others more important? It is true that we have heard a lot about empathy, the capability to share another being's emotions and feelings. But one cannot empathise with others, unless he, as an individual, feels emotionally secured. Feeling secured emotionally makes one feel contented about one's self and this content feeling may lead to the feeling of freedom, that in the end will lead to the peaceful and life-in-abundance feeling, the utmost feeling in which one thinks that he is grateful for what he has and that resources the nature has offered to us are not limited. With this feeling, we will not feel jealous towards others, no more envy as we are contented for what we have.

How can one achieve emotional security? Emotional security comes as a result of one's gratitude for all he has. It comes as one completely accepts whatever comes to him, whether the things are pleasing or displeasing, with no resistance. By accepting things just the way they are, it will enable a person to accept the responsibility for whatever that may happen to his life. It is the gratitude that he feels which will make him feel thankful for what he has and try to adjust things that displease him to make it in line with what he wants. I believe when we are grateful for the things we have, then we can see the world in a clearer picture. And by having this clearer picture about ourselves and what we have, we then feel emotionally secured.

When one believes that he is secured, he tends to think that life is abundant of great things and resources that are available for every single person on earth to use. By thinking that life is abundant, one will not think twice or thrice to share something that he has or the capability that he owns with the rest of people who need it. And by feeling secured, one country might not use up all its budget to fund a war against another just because of its fears that the country is running out of oil. And there might be lots of souls that might have been able to be saved from the cruelty of wars.

If everybody in the world feels emotionally secured about themselves, how beautiful the world can be. If I can use what I have to help the people around me lift up their dreams, if only everybody knows that we all can achieve our dreams together without feeling afraid that the resources in achieving those dreams are scarce in amount, we may know that it is not our modern weapons that make us feel secured and we may be willing to give up even the last dollar that we have to somebody who needs it more. So, if I am being asked, what is my role in creating a peaceful world? My answer will be by being emotionally secured, by being grateful and contented for what I have. Because it is only then we can fully feel that we are rehumanised as human beings.