The Wisdom of Insecurity

by Alan W. Watts

The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.

There have been two opposing reactions to the decay of belief: relief in tossing off the old shackles, and worry that reason and sanity will give way to chaos.

Watts wants to carve a third way, pointing out that belief has disappeared through careful doubt and examination. This is the first sign that he welcomes the insecurity others fear, and this quickly becomes the main theme.

He takes a pithy truth from, say, the Upanishads—that fear is born of duality—and spins a long chapter about how animals experience pain, simply and without dread, while human beings are overshadowed by anxiety because of our divided selves.

If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o’-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.

The intellectual who tries to escape from neurosis by escaping from the facts is merely acting on the principle that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.”

For the animal to be happy it is enough that this moment be enjoyable. But man is hardly satisfied with this at all. He is much more concerned to have enjoyable memories and expectations — especially the latter. With these assured, he can put up with an extremely miserable present. Without this assurance, he can be extremely miserable in the midst of immediate physical pleasure.

The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings the past and the future are not as real, but more real than the present. The present cannot be lived happily unless the past has been “cleared up” and the future is bright with promise.

By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for pleasure is offset by the “ability” to dread pain and to fear the unknown.

To be happy, we must have what we cannot have. In man, nature has conceived desires which it is impossible to satisfy. To drink more fully of the fountain of pleasure, it has brought forth capacities which make man the more susceptible to pain.

The human body lives because it is a complex of motions, of circulation, respiration, and digestion. To resist change, to try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

Religion wants to assure the future beyond death, and science wants to assure it until death, and to postpone death. But tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.

You cannot plan to be happy. You can plan to exist, but in themselves existence and non-existence are neither pleasurable nor painful. I am even assured by doctors that there are circumstances under which death can be a highly pleasant experience.