The Awesomeness of Vulnerability
First off I am nervous. I have been nervous to start a blog for about a year or so because I didn’t think what I had to say would be relevant to your lives. Also I do not have the best grammar, punctuation, spelling and delivery. My words could very well be of no use to you and I could be consistently failing in grammar, but now I am okay with that. That is where the (drum roll please) awesomeness of vulnerability enters in and saves the day.
Remember in middle school or early high school when you liked that boy or girl and was so nervous to ask them to be your “significant other.” I was the the most afraid. I was the guy to tell my friend to ask my crush’s friend who she liked. This was and still is too much of a process. Even if my friend found out she liked me, I would second guess him like he was lying to me. The vulnerability of asking the girl out and getting rejected scared me and probably you as well. My generation than compensated by writing notes, AOL, MSN Messenger, and chat rooms because the person on the opposite end could not see our vulnerable state. Now days with social media taking off it’s becoming even more present. Now days I know people who are afraid to order pizza on the phone because the vulnerability of messing up an unfiltered conversation scares them. This sounds absurd but we all have ways we compensate for the sake of remaining safe and in control of situations.
The craziest irony in it all is that we don’t experience wholeness or growth until we are vulnerable. In my sport (track and field) I lift weights quite a bit. If I am going to achieve a new personal best in a lift, I have to put myself in a situation where I am vulnerable. The weight could crush me, I could appear weak, I could be injured, and I could fail. These are all possibilities and happen often. But other possibilities are success, I could get stronger, I could learn, and I can be triumph over the trial.
Think about this scenario, when a man proposes to a woman for marriage he is usually on one knee. Being on one knee is one of the most vulnerable positions we can be in. Nobody I know would propose over the phone, through text, or the Facebook Messenger app; why is that? Because the vulnerability is letting the woman know that man is willing to sacrifice himself and his ego to get something beyond his control.
What are you willing to be vulnerable in life for? What is it that you are willing to get on a knee for and say….”I don’t care what I look like but I am giving you all of me, regardless of the outcome.” Vulnerability is the action of realizing you’re just a human and being okay with being nothing more or nothing less.
So look at the awesomeness of vulnerability as an opportunity and not a hazard, as growth and not a detriment, as a positive experience and not potentially bad outcome.
