There comes a point in life when it dawns on you that anything can happen at any time. This is a painful, even alarming realisation. But such is the truth of our lives. At the heart of it all seems to lie our modern belief that life is intended to be pain free. No matter the precautions we take, no matter how clever we are at avoiding risk, catastrophe may only be just around the corner. All you have to do is watch the news. Things happen suddenly and from one moment to the next. A bomb explodes and innocent people are killed inside a building where they were quietly going about their business; a gas leak and someone never emerges from his bath alive; a car accident and there are victims; you’re in some ‘paradise’ on holiday and the unexpected happens. Every minute of the day, somewhere, someone’s world capsizes and the entire arrangement of their existence is disrupted forever. They have come to a crossroad. The media informs us and goes on to the next piece of news leaving the victims struggling with their fate. Dante says it more elegantly: “Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight world and woke to find myself in a dark wood.”

The truth is that most of us live under the illusion that we are special. We exist secure in the belief that awful things happen to other people, but never to us and those we love. All those statistics which are thrown about provide no consolation. We are told that something or other only happens to one in five thousand, one in one hundred thousand, one in a million. At a glance this may seem reassuring for we carry within us a certain optimism which makes us assume that we shall not be among the unlucky few.

We try to do right and be good, hoping to buy ourselves security. But it simply doesn’t work that way. Security is not for sale. All it takes is for you to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. When we stop to think of what might happen to us and our loved ones, we are gripped by fear. But we have to endure fear, live with it and overcome it enough to go on living our life knowing full well that we are as vulnerable as the next person. A friend finds it consoling that ‘Fear not’ is repeated in the Bible over 300 times. “That,” she has concluded, “must surely have some significance.” So we talk ourselves into placing our trust in the hands of God. What else can we do? We cannot control everything. But we know that “bad things happen to good people” too. So we have to let go and live life as fully as possible.

But there are those who exist constantly under the dread of future catastrophe, hardly venturing to do anything. They conjure up expectations of “what if”: “What if I break my leg… lose my job… my home… make some fatal mistake… Become seriously ill… be caught in an earthquake. What if something happens to those I love… to the children… to the grandchildren…” All of us live with these fears but do not nurture them. We try to put them on the back burner.

But we are living in a capricious world. There have always been wars, oppression, corruption, disease. The human condition has been pretty stable in these matters if in nothing else. By continually focusing on the future we experience anxiety in the present. We are anxious in what we anticipate ­– either real or imagined. If we travel by plane, are we going to be the victims of some plane crash; will the train we are taking be the very one in a million that will derail?

Exaggerating problems, we make mountains out of molehills and losing a sense of perspective simply makes our life and that of those around us more difficult and full of tension. Life, from being an adventure to be lived, becomes a burden to be borne. By this constant need for security we are destroying the moment by concentrating on the future. By exaggerating problems we are losing a sense of perspective. This fear to venture, to set out on a journey inhibits life.

There is of course no such thing as security. Certainly there are insurance policies for everything and anything. But these only cover finances. Nothing and no one comes with a guarantee. Well, nothing important. So perhaps it is best to come to terms with the knowledge that unhappiness is inseparable from being human; that we have to learn to cope and be prepared to face “both triumphs and disasters” just the same.

Of course it is foolish to take undue risk. A tour of antiquities in Iraq at present would not be a good idea. Or indeed a trip to Damascus, which happens to be on my bucket list. But life is to be lived and taking calculated risks makes sense. We have to see the future optimistically and not constantly think of the catastrophes that may befall us if we venture further than our front door. Very often they don’t.

Helen Keller (1880 – 1968), the American author and educator who became both blind and deaf after suffering a nearly fatal illness when just 19 months old, has it all wrapped up beautifully in the following quotation: “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”