By Jude Qassem
I’ve come to realize that there is a particular kind of safety in Kuwait. A safety unlike any other and that is remarkable in many ways. It’s akin to that of a warm embrace, the consistency of zwaras, the simplicity of being at home. The safety of stability, comfort, ease and predictability.
It’s the safety that comes with not embarrassing your family. The responsibility of maintaining a reputation. The pressures to succeed in order to please those around you. This safety is a gift, a gift that many fail to appreciate. But it can also feel like a weight on your shoulders, heavy and restricting.
The act of “playing it safe” has its pros and cons. On the one hand, to play it safe ensures a lack of risk. On the other, there’s a sense of regret regarding what could have been. To play it safe in Kuwait is rarely framed as fear, in fact it is encouraged, seen as the wise and more mature choice. And understandably so, as we all grow to become wiser and more mature. But the question arises: “Why risk what is already secure? Why complicate what works?”
Ultimately, the question is extremely valid. This country was built on survival, adaptation, and working with the resources that were available to us. Especially in the context of our history, going back to the pearl diving days all the way to the oil boom, Kuwait has created a sense of stability for generations to come. It’s something which is commemorated with the utmost gratitude and respect.
This stability has been a collective achievement of how far we’ve come as a society, as a culture, and as a country. But somewhere in that triumph and achievement, standards naturally become higher. And the margin for error in taking risks grows slimmer.
Boldness needs exposure. It requires being seen, listening to others, and observing with intent. It requires being mindful of what is unfamiliar and taking that leap into the unknown. It asks you to put your pride aside and present ideas that might fail (which is completely fine), might confuse (which can be hard to grasp), might disturb (which provokes the curious.
In a place such as Kuwait where reputation holds so much weight and harmony is prized, that type of exposure feels unattainable at times. As a collectivist society, Kuwait’s societal structure insists on prioritization of group harmony and encourages interdependence. It harbors collective goals over individual desires, fostering strong loyalty to families, communities, or organizations. The benefits that come with living in a collectivist society are incredible. From time to time though, the responsibilities of being in a collectivist society can be overwhelming, stifling, and restricting for many.
So you learn to edit yourself. You act a certain way towards some people. You decide to dress in a particular fashion for your own reasons. You dilute the parts of you that were often remarked at, and you essentially remove the parts that might provoke. You cater to those around you but then you begin to ask yourself the question of who you’re really doing all of this for.
You hold in the ideas, emotions and anxieties that are beautifully complex instead of speaking out about truths that are relatable to more than one type of person. And similar to the oil tanks and water towers, you become a reflection of the relics in Kuwait’s landscape and become a master at self-containment.
Boldness calls for a disregard for safety, pushing past the boundaries that have been created by our predecessors. When risk is discouraged, many simply turn to imagine their ideas quietly, in solitude, or– if you’re lucky and find the right people– within their own social circles. But quiet imagination has a cost. We’ve seen bold creatives in the past sometimes physically leaving to places where failure is not fatal to reputation. At times emotionally, retreating into their own minds, concocting ideas that will never see the light of day. And in this regard, what is lost is not just individual ambition: it is cultural vitality.
A society that prizes safety above all else may achieve stability, but in turn it risks repetition. It becomes hesitant at reinvention, scared of trying something new and inventive on multiple scales. Kuwait has reinvented itself before. Kuwait would not be what it is today if it wasn’t for its reinvention, from the discovery of oil to the resilience of the people through trying times during the invasion.
The question here is not whether Kuwait is creative. Rather, the question is whether we hold that space to allow for boldness to take action. For the creative thinker, playing it safe becomes a daily struggle. You trade uncertainty for approval, experimentation for respectability. The cost accumulates quietly. It shows up in the cautiousness of our public spaces, in the repetition of our aesthetics, in the hesitation to ask questions that do not have polite answers. Playing it safe feels responsible. But it can also be a refusal to test the elasticity of our culture, to see how much it can bend.
Creativity does not demand chaos. It does not demand disrespect for tradition, a changing of rules, or calling for a complete flipping of the script. It simply asks for space. Space to try. Space to fail. Space to be imperfect.
Perhaps the greatest cost of staying safe is when the culture itself becomes cautious. We begin to believe that boldness belongs elsewhere, since it has been rejected and discarded in the past. That experimentation is foreign. That imagination is indulgent. It certainly isn’t.
To create is to believe that the present is not final, and it never will be as long as it is the present. It is to trust that stability and evolution are not opposites, rather they can work in tandem in more ways than one. It is to accept that reputation and image can survive a misstep, which is okay. It is to understand that care for a society sometimes means stretching it gently beyond its comfort, which is ultimately what makes a society thrive.
Safety has protected much here in Kuwait, and for that I am grateful. But safety alone cannot shape a future. The question is not whether caution makes sense (it often does). The real question is what we are willing to lose in exchange for it.
Because the cost of playing it safe is rarely visible in a given moment. It is visible years later in the risks that were never taken, the conversations never started, the “shoulda woulda coulda” ideas that didn’t get the chance to take off. And in the realization that the safest life was also the smallest one.
