Vulnerability and Courage

“In our culture,” teaches Dr. Brené Brown, “we associate vulnerability with emotions we want to avoid such as fear, shame, and uncertainty. Yet we too often lose sight of the fact that vulnerability is also the birthplace of joy, belonging, creativity, authenticity, and love.” When we say we love someone, we MUST risk vulnerability, or contempt and resentment will creep into the relationship. Those that love you know when you're disingenuous-without vulnerability, actions don't connect with words.“The research shows that we try to ward disappointment with a shield of cynicism, disarm shame by numbing ourselves against joy, and circumvent grief by shutting off our willingness to love.” You may be shielded from disappointment and hurt, but you'll also be alone behind your shield. To love someone is to hurt sometimes. If someone really loves us, they don't intend to hurt and will spend much time making up for unintentional wounding. Those who deny vulnerability will hurt then act as if they haven't wounded the one they love. Think about it. I am thankful today that I try, most of the time, to have a heart that continues to love even when I think I've been hurt by another's actions or responses. I have to muster the courage most days to do that when it would be easier just to shrug my shoulders and try to stop caring about others. Some days it seems a lot easier to just give up and go hide somewhere where I think no one can hurt me again. Still, I'm not made that way. No matter what the hurt, I get back our there and try again. And that, my friends, is courage.

I heard a friend today say "it's not fair!" in response to a situation that was hurtful. Our response is often to get angry and withdraw; it's natural to put our guard up when we feel wounded. I see that a lot with the political posts on FB. People are afraid: afraid of losing something, afraid of being hurt, or afraid of not getting what they want. It takes a lot of courage to continue to keep your heart open to love, and open to other people when you'd rather not be hurt anymore. That's why I believe that LOVE is the most courageous thing a person can do. Anyone can hate. anyone can be angry. Those who choose to respond with compassion and love choose to look past their fear and look toward hope.

When we choose the courage to understand why someone "does" something to us, we realize that much of what we experience is our reaction to someone else instead of the other person's actions. It's difficult to guess someone's intentions, especially someone you don't know well, or a stranger. However, it is especially complicated with those to whom we've given access to our personal stories, our deepest relationships, and we begin to perceive that they hurt us because we see something deeply flawed within ourselves. We take our flaws and we filter everyone else's actions through them, resulting in a life where we feel constantly attacked and/or used. Resentment builds. Our relationships wither. But, what if we could just find the courage to love our own SELF - flaws and all? What if we found the courage to stop letting the actions and opinions of others determine what we think of ourselves as individuals? With all our mistakes, and all the things we've learned from our experiences, what if we began to view our inner selves as whole and complete?

Mostly, if we found the courage to do that, we could bring compassion to others, bring empathy to others, and begin to understand that life ISN'T fair - and that's ok. Life has nothing personal against us. Life is a tapestry of experiences and our reactions to them. We can choose to stop trying to weave together the different colored threads of our experience, dye them all black, and make them a snarled, tangled web of misery that protects us from other experiences. In that web, we'll be safe, and anyone that approaches will be paralyzed and consumed by our fear. Eventually, our webs will bump into other webs, and become helplessly tangled in an unmanageable knot of despair from which few will be able to escape, but we will be safe in the center of that large web - each disconnected and preying on each other until only the matted morass of black threads remains, and we no longer have the strength or will to try to liberate ourselves. 

OR... we can choose to take each of the threads, see them for the color they are, and find a way to knot them around each other. Parts of the tapestry might be muted, parts might be bright, and other parts might be splotches of misery. The picture will come together as it will come together, but it will be a whole picture that we can share, that might keep someone else warm, or that might keep us warm in the days when we need shelter. There will be flaws in the weaving of the tapestry, but we will be able to see the picture we weave as we begin to tie it into the tapestries around us, creating a large picture of how our lives are interconnected, but one not more important than the other. Do you have enough courage to try to love? Do you have enough courage to open your heart to the possibility that you might be hurt again?