There has been a burglary next door and you no longer feel safe at home.

Take this situation apart. Each piece goes in one box: yours, or not yours. There is no third box, and almost nothing falls in one piece.

Yours

The measures, and the letting go after.Replacing the lock, putting up the light: taking measures is finite work. Staying vigilant is infinite work. Do the first well so you can put down the second; the door is worth checking once tonight, not five times.

Not yours

That it happened, and that it could happen again.The burglary next door is a fact, and absolute certainty that it will never touch you does not exist; it never did, before the burglary either.
The startling at every sound, the first nights.The hearing is on alert and the heart joins in; that is the body’s alarm system working overtime for a few nights after trouble in the street. The startling itself is no weakness and no omen; it is the after-effect. This too recalibrates by itself.

The reasoning. Safety is bought with measures; peace is bought by stopping afterwards. Do not forget that second purchase.

What you fear may well never come; meanwhile you suffer as if it already had.after Seneca

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