In modern life, the pursuit of security has become a dominant cultural value. From personal finance to global politics, from parenting to career planning, the word “security” is offered as a goal worth sacrificing for. Yet as Alan Watts sharply observed, the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are often two sides of the same coin. In striving for certainty, people can become trapped in a state of chronic tension, akin to someone holding their breath.

Watts’ metaphor—“to hold your breath is to lose your breath”—strikes at the heart of this paradox. Breath is both essential and automatic. But when we try to control it, especially out of fear, we disrupt the very process that sustains us. In the same way, when we attempt to rigidly control life to eliminate all risks, we often end up suffocating the spontaneity, creativity, and adaptability that allow us to thrive.

A society obsessed with control becomes a contest of anxiety. Watts compares it to a breath-retention competition, where everyone is tight with fear and flushed with stress. Taut as drums and purple as beets, people live in a state of guarded vigilance, not because they are safe, but because they are terrified of losing what little safety they think they have achieved.

This perspective invites a radical rethinking. What if the pursuit of total security is a false promise? What if, in trying to protect ourselves from every possible misfortune, we also cut ourselves off from living freely and meaningfully?

True resilience may lie not in building walls around our lives, but in becoming more skillful at moving with uncertainty. Trusting the process of life, like trusting the rhythm of our own breath, means letting go of the need to control every outcome. It means finding strength not in holding on, but in releasing—again and again.

Freedom, then, does not come from securing every variable. It comes from the capacity to remain grounded, aware, and engaged, even when outcomes are unclear. Like breathing, living fully depends on letting go.