PDA and insecurity
by Bob on May 15, 2007
Back in the 1980s, a girlfriend of mine in New York City once told me that public displays of affection are signs of insecurity.
I've been thinking about this for twenty years now and haven't fully come to a conclusion.
Hmm. It seems to be and yet not to be true fully simultaneously.
When I lived in Paris, France in the 1970s, it was totally accepted to show decent signs of affection to a loved one in public. Everyone seemed to be hugging, holding hands, kissing, and entangled. And this seemed to be the norm. And nothing odd was thought about it. It was, after all, Paris which is quintessentially romantic, like some other cities in the world.
But as the years went on, outside of France, especially in New York City, Los Angeles, etc. I noticed that some people really held on to their loved ones in an extreme and ostentatious way. As if to show off. And as if they were afraid of losing the person, with which there is nothing terribly wrong.
But public ostentatious behaviour can be clearly interpreted as a kind of insecurity. Definitely. Even in clothes worn, jewelry, and the like. So my girlfriend had made her point well.
Seemingly, if people are secure in their relationships and love, they don't have to have the public show to, in essence, have others verify that.
But it is distinctly a part of life. Perhaps going back to cave man. My woman, my man bit.
Insecurity is a very tensely defined concept and emotion. I once heard back in the 1960s, a psychologist at university lecture on what he called the wisdom of insecurity. Now that was a real eye opener.
And Alan Watts had written a book by that title, "The Wisdom of Insecurity: a Message for an Age of Anxiety" in 1968. It was brilliant. I think the back cover blurb said it all:
"The critical condition of the world compels us to face this problem: how is man to live in a world in which he can never be secure, deprived, as many are, of the consolations of religious belief? The author shows that this problem contains its own solution."
Then, of course, there is Carl Jung and his "Modern Man in Search of a Soul" from 1955. Brilliantly engrossing and Jung at his full throttle. It makes interesting reading in conjunction with Alan Watts and his 1961 book "Psychotherapy East and West".
As I mentioned before, insecurity is a complicated issue. A little of it might be essential to healthy living, but more than some nebulous line crossed, it becomes paralysing.
As the American baseball sage, Yogi Berra, once purportedly said: "You can observe a lot by just watching". Then again he also said "We have made too many wrong mistakes" and "If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else". Okay my last Yogi quote: "If you ask me anything I don't know, I'm not going to answer". We should all be so lucky. Amazing.
And lo to you who thought in modernity that a PDA was simply a Personal Digitial Assistant.
So it goes.