Security

security...what does this word mean in relation to life as we know it today? for the most part, it means safety and freedom from worry. it is said to be the end that all men strive for; but is security a utopian goal or is it another word for 'rut?
let us visualize the secure man; and by this term, i mean a man who has settled for finacial and personal security for his goal in life. in general, he is a man who has pushed ambition and initiative aside and settled down, so to speak, in a boring, but safe and comfortable rut for the rest of his life. his future is but an extension of his present, and he accepts it as such with a complacent shrug of his shoulders. his ideas and ideals are those of society in general and he is accepted as a 'respectable', but average and prosaic man. but is he a man? has he any self-respect or pride in himself? how could he when he risked nothing and gained nothing? what does he think when he sees his youthful dreams of adventure, accomplishment, travel, and romance buried under the cloak of conformity? how does he feel when he realizes that he has barely tasted the meal of life; when he sees the prison he has made for himself in pursuit of the almighty dollar? if he thinks this is all well and good, but think of the tragedy of a man who has sacrificed his freedom on the alter of security, and wishes he could turn back the hands of time. a man is to be pitied who lacked the courage to accept the challenge of freedom and depart from the cushion of 'security' and see life as it is instead of living it second-hand. life has by-passed this man and he has watched from a secure place, afraid to seek anything better. what has he done except to sit and wait for the tomorrow which never comes?
turn back the pages of history and see the men who have shaped the destiny of the world. security was never theirs, but thye lived rather than 'exsisted'. where would the world be if all men sought security and had not taken risks or gambled with thier lives on the chance that, if they won, life would be different and richer? it is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we recieve the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is a drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must be laid aside from a life which is but a painful wait for death. these are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from a life out of imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. these are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. these are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but wake at dawn to take their places in the now-familiar rut and to merely exsist through another day. for them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a tread-mill, cursing their exsistance, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. they lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences.
as an after thought, it seems hardly proper to write of life without once mentioning happiness; so we shall let you, the reader, answer this question for your himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived, or he who has stayed "secure"-ly on shore and merely 'exsisted'?
-Hunter S. Thompson