Prompt 27: The Safest Place On Earth

It is not the within the historic ivory washed walls of the White House. Neither is it deep underneath Cheyenne Mountain where the North American Aerospace Defense Command resides. No, it not stacked on top of the piles of Gold in the vaults of Fort Knox either. The safest place in the world is most certainly my home. My dwelling is filled with the things I love. Books, sports, family heirlooms, and even what we will call here, “center-fired bad guy repellant.”. More than what I need to be happy. But according to Maslow, happiness requires safety first and foremost. The darkness is all around us these days. Every day, there are new stories of violence and crime. It is easy to just let the darkness in. But my home is full of light.

I have always felt safe here. My neighborhood is one of the safest in the city. Families here are mostly lower middle class. They mostly keep to themselves and no one causes trouble. All of this creates a slice of peace and quiet not to dissimilar to the fictional village of Hobbiton. Except without all the hairy feet; save for mine of course. The crime rate is almost non-existent and when there is crime, it is limited to domestic situations and family problems. Those things, while they can have an obvious adverse affect on the community in the long term, have no direct impact on my abode. My home remains safe and secure. More importantly, because my home is a basement apartment, if someone where to break into the house at large, it would likely be the house upstairs that would be the obvious target.

But my home is not safe only due to external circumstances, but internal ones as well. As one of the one hundred million in America who actively put the Second Amendment to use, I take my safety and the safety of my family seriously. I refuse to rely on other men, however skilled and professional, that are minutes away from me when an assailant is only seconds away. I am the real first responder. Due to the touchiness of the “G” word in our society today (especially in schools, the one place where, ironically, the danger is tragically the greatest), I will leave that portion of this expose where it stands. But I will say that the presence of such tools in the home do not make the home more unsafe. Yet when used with training, safety, and proper care, they make my home drastically more safe.

Lastly, my home is a place of emotional safety too. While my primary place of emotional and spiritual solace remains my church, my home holds firm at second. I am very busy. Between work, church, volunteering, and school, I look forward to finding my way home every day. It is a relief, most times, when I walk through the door and lay down my keys and bag. I often make my way straight to either my bathroom chair or living room chair, plopping down, kicking off my shoes and turning on the TV to see if the world has ended yet. I turn on my computer, see what my friends abroad are into, and do some homework or play a game before it's lights out. Sports populate much of my time at home. As does the news. Though both probably raise my blood pressure slightly, only one typically has a positive outcome.

My home is simple. It is more safe than anywhere I know. Cut out of the earth and crammed about five feet into the soil, it has truncated windows that serve just enough light to not feel claustrophobic, but not quite enough to dispel the darkness. I have adapted, however. I have lamps and lights that compensate, filling my home with light. Darkness has a funny way of creeping in, like with the dwindling intensity of a candle. It comes slowly with the setting of the sun, sinisterly working its way from the ground up to the points of the trees. It takes people who will lite a fire to scare the darkness away, sending it slinking back into its cracks and crevasses. It was Einstein, I believe, that once stated that there is no such thing as darkness, but only the absence of light. Which makes me think; I think I need to invest in bigger windows.