After vulnerability

It is a bold step to be vulnerable, to be brave: to share something on Facebook that makes you feel exposed; to share something with a group you have not shared with anybody before; to reveal your faltering feelings to a loved one.

After this has been done a few times, in no longer takes bravery to keep doing it. Especially if the process is to keep going to new groups to be vulnerable for the first time, or to keep posting things on Facebook that put you out there. 

What I am starting to think is that there is something more. Something about committing to a group or a relationship, about continuing to show up even if there is nothing particularly vulnerable or exciting to reveal. Its like there is an initial step of putting yourself out there, and then not going and looking for the next post-vulnerability hit or accolade (or hangover).

I'm sure Brene Brown would have quite a bit to say about this, and I admit my thoughts are raw on this matter. But speaking from my experience I don't have too much trouble showing up and revealing who I am to a group. What I seem to find harder is making a commitment to keep showing up, persisting, just as I am, feeling vulnerable or not.

For me, they boil down to this

When I think about intimate relationships, for me the crux of it all boils down to this:

1) Am I willing to allow the other person to be exactly as they are, to accept and love them for their whole person, over the course of this relationship?

2) Am I willing to explore and express my whole person, to be true to myself over the course of this relationship?

3) Am I fully accepted and loved by the other person as I reveal more of who I am over the course of this relationship?

In the early days of a relationship it is very easy to naively say 'Yes' to these three questions. And it doesn't matter if the relationship started in your 20s, or 70s, or whether it is your 1st of 10th. It is always the same feeling of elation and optimism, and perhaps without it no relationship would ever start.

As time rolls on there will inevitably come more than one moment when your partner shows you part of who they are, and you don't like it. In fact you are repulsed by it. And correspondingly there will come a moment when you want to reveal part of who you are, and there is a risk that your partner will not accept it because it is not who they think you are or want you to be.

For me that is the true test of a relationship: that moment of seeing and accepting the other, and seeing and revealing ourselves.

Laundry List Item 16: Everyone is, in their own way, vulnerable

I am in the middle of watching the third season of House of Cards. One thing that Frank Underwood does so well is turning to his benefit whatever situation he finds himself in. He does not get stuck in the past for more than a moment before coming up with a plan of how this situation can work for him.

One thing that he also does so well is to exploit the vulnerability of others when working out how to make that situation work for him. He has a memory, an instinct, and a well populated file on all those who he could one day use in this way.

And through the show we also get glimpses of the vulnerability of this man who shows so little vulnerability to others. 

Vulnerability has been getting a good name lately. It is a way for us to show to others what is really going on, and to enable connection at a deeper level. All of us have this vulnerability. At the very least we have bodies that fail us. And more than that, we have emotions that bubble up all the time, informing us of what a particular situation is creating inside us.

We have a choice when confronted with our own vulnerability, or that of others, to use it as a way to connect, or as a way to distance.

Sharing is caring

I was at a Chinese New Year dinner last night after a tough day of not really knowing how to move forward with my business ideas, or perhaps unwilling to commit to one of those ideas and run with it.

At the dinner was a guy who I had not seen for quite a while. He is such a genuine and friendly person that I found myself being quite open with him about what I was working on, even though we do not know each other that well.

As I began to talk about my business ideas, he became genuinely excited about one of them. His enthusiasm for it reminded me that I am actually working on some interesting things; to embrace those times of doubt and uncertainty as inevitable and necessary parts of the journey.

I took the risk in being vulnerable, sharing my fragile thoughts, and in return I received the care I needed at that moment.