Vulnerability: You’ve gotta give it to get it
The other day I was talking to a family member, who said something about poor women that made me cringe (#povertywoke). My response was a rambling monologue about poverty in America, compassion, and Jesus that — even though it all may have been the “right” way to think — ended in frustration on both sides.
I was reflecting later: how could I be so right (#humility) and have the conversation come out so wrong?
The answer, came down to vulnerability, the internet’s new favourite buzzword, thanks in part to Brene Brown. (I’m comfortably on that bandwagon; Lately every conversation with fellow Since You Asked collaborator Linette ends with us deciding that more vulnerability is the answer to the world’s problems.) Instead of jumping up onto my soap box the minute I heard a faint hint of “wrong thinking,” I should have accepted my family member’s vulnerability and asked where her thoughts were coming from. I realized that she was speaking from her role as a mother, her deep pain at seeing other people’s pain — my sermon did nothing to acknowledge the valid emotional experience that led to her statement, no matter how misguided it was.
We all want — and need — the freedom and support to be vulnerable. But here’s the catch: if we want to be allowed to be vulnerable, we have to be equally enthusiastic about offering that opportunity to others.
The internet is not a safe place to be vulnerable. It’s a great place to be publically shamed, only partially understood, and never forgiven.
This lack of offering vulnerability extends beyond the internet into our analog interactions — and in an increasingly polarized public space, it’s dangerous.
After another particularly unhelpful sermonizing moment from yours truly at a family gathering, I talked it through with my dad. He told me something I’m trying to enact, to remember, as I speak in a public space:
It’s not your responsibility to change people. It’s not your responsibility to force people to think how you think. It’s your responsibility to walk alongside people where they are at, accepting their vulnerabilities, offering yours, sharing how you’ve grown and changed in the context of a safe relationship.
Wow.
I’m just going to be honest here: I’m horrible at this. I have a tendency to sermonize (follow my publication at medium.com/since-you-asked!) and the second I learn something new, I tend to reject the past self who didn’t “know what I know now.” This can also lead to me having little patience for others who don’t have the knowledge or perspective I have, no matter how recently gained.
But I gotta leave space for others to be vulnerable, because boy, do I need it. Looking back on some of the things I’ve thought, or even publicly declared, I’m actively ashamed. But if I wasn’t able to speak, to be part of a dialogue with others, to be part of conversations even with my imperfect thinking, how would I have grown, changed or learned? Instead, I would have slowly ossified into a fundamentalist — and Lord knows we don’t need any more of those.
If we don’t allow people to be vulnerable in their thinking or speech — to use words we don’t agree with, to say things we don’t agree with — we are culpable in their polarization, in their inability to engage. When we don’t allow people to grow because they aren’t yet “where we’re at,” we’re effectively keeping them in one place.
I’m trying to offer vulnerability. To be ok when someone hasn’t yet learned the appropriate terminology. To try to understand what fears or passions lie beneath insensitive statements, especially in the people I love, the people I want to help grow.
Only because I know that I need it so much myself.
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So often, the relational context on the internet is tenuous, false or completely absent. How can we allow others to be vulnerable in public or digital spaces?
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