Why the World Feels Unsafe (Even When Your Life Is Fine)

You've probably noticed it. A background feeling that something isn't quite right. Not a specific anxiety — nothing you could point to in a therapy session and say that's the thing. More like a low hum underneath everything else. A sense that the ground you're standing on isn't as solid as it looks.

And the world seems to confirm it. The politics, the climate, the economy, the AI question. Things feel like they're shifting faster than anyone can make sense of. It's easy to assume that's where the feeling comes from — that you feel unsafe because the world is unsafe.

But here's the question worth sitting with: has there ever been a time in human history when the world was stable?

The Ground Was Never Solid

People have always gotten sick. Always lost the ones they loved. For most of human history, losing a child to illness or a partner in childbirth was ordinary. Beyond the personal, there were famines, wars, plagues, the collapse of entire civilisations. The stakes today are real — but the instability of life is not new.

What was different, for most of our history, is that people had something to hold onto. Religions gave meaning. Philosophies offered explanations. Shared beliefs made suffering feel like part of a larger story — heaven, karma, progress, purpose. These stories didn't make life easy, but they gave people somewhere to stand.

Today, many of those stories have stopped working. For a lot of us, the old beliefs no longer feel true. And what's replaced them? Mostly distraction. Screens, entertainment, shopping, and the quiet promise that if we just get more — more success, more money, more experiences — we'll finally feel okay.

The Feeling That Doesn't Go Away

Even when life is going well — when you have the relationships, the work, the health, the security — there's often still a quiet feeling that something is missing. Not something dramatic, just a subtle restlessness. An itch you can't quite scratch.

If the world suddenly became stable — if the politics calmed down, the climate crisis resolved, and your life arranged itself exactly as you hoped — would that feeling finally disappear? Or would it still be there?

I think it would still be there. Because I don't believe that feeling comes from the conditions of your life. It comes from somewhere inside you. Somewhere much older than the news cycle or your bank balance.

What the Wisdom Traditions Have Always Known

Throughout history and across cultures, there have always been people — often mystics, monastics, and philosophers — willing to devote everything to understanding this feeling. They refused to settle for fantasy or comforting beliefs, and wanted to know what was actually true.

And they pointed to something remarkable: that there was an end to it. They called it different things — enlightenment, awakening, liberation, union with God — all pointing to a deep peace. Not the peace of a good day or a quiet mind. Something that stays whether you're having the best or the worst day of your life.

This has been understood for millennia. The unsafety you feel is not a flaw in you, and it's not primarily about the state of the world. It's something the contemplative traditions have always addressed — and always healed.

A Different Question

Most of us try to solve the feeling by changing our circumstances. We optimise, we achieve, we plan. And when that doesn't work, we turn inward — therapy, meditation, self-help. These can genuinely help. But if the feeling persists even after years of inner work, it might be worth asking a different question.

Not what's wrong with me? or what's wrong with the world? — but what if this feeling is older than anything I remember?

What if the deepest source of unsafety isn't relational — something that happened between you and another person — but existential? Something that formed before memory, before language, in your earliest relationship with existence itself?

That's the question I've been sitting with for a long time. And it's what led me to write Existential Safety.