Vulnerability: The Master Key for Life

It's not the thing you want to hear. And it's not the thing most people believe is essential to living. Of course, it might be a part of life, but it certainly couldn't be the key to living well.

Yes, Vulnerability is an ambiguous concept, impossibly difficult to understand. This is the reason people can't see it as the focal point of humanity.

Artificially changing perspective may feel like submitting, self-soothing, or settling--yielding to reality as an unfair and uncaring environment. Spiritual help resources, mindfulness, and journaling may sound inane because of this. "Be Open." That message does little when you don't know what it means.

The fact is, spiritual growth and awakening isn't always the classic image of enlightenment from crisis, some lustrous breakthrough that can't be helped or predicted. It can be a lot more like studying in high school or college, where absorbing new and expansive material coalesce to cover and explain life's questions. Naturally, this is a passive accumulation that goes largely unnoticed until questions arise. Questions lead to answers lead to more questions lead to more answers. And over time, everything can be perfectly explained and justified.

Natural science, psychology, and sociology can reveal data on human functions and patterns. Literature and language can expose the mental cultures and perspectives of people grappling with life's questions.

It's through all of this that it is possible to understand exactly what vulnerability is and how it functions as the key to every door.

Brené Brown - Qualitative Researcher at the University of Huston

Maybe you've heard of her. Or maybe you haven't. But one of the most unique and relational aspects of her work is the fact that she, herself, didn't believe her findings the first time she discovered them. Her work told her truths she never wanted to believe.

Brown has spent a majority of her professional life interviewing people to understand the origins and meaning of grief, shame, connection, wellbeing, and other aspects of human connection. She qualifies this data to find general themes across people living "wholeheartedly" and those who "struggle with living." What she found is that these wholehearted people held an accepting attitude toward the grievances and losses they've experienced in life through actions of vulnerability.

The problem, though, is that when you synonymously assume vulnerability as weakness, or the mere process of expressing sadness, depression, and insecurity, you can't possibly understand its essentiality. The mindset becomes: "it's a tool to use in life, sure, but it isn't the nature of life." And with this, every other spiritual teaching can be misunderstood or seen as trivial. The message "Be open" may be misinterpreted as "look for opportunities" or "be a 'yes' person'" and you miss the point entirely. Gratitude serves no other function than to remind you of what you have, not propel you toward what you want, etc.

Brown's definition of vulnerability describes it as "uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure" (Brown, TedTalk: Youtube). By far the best definition, it captures simultaneously the workings of the world, as an uncertain, risky arena, and how humans are meant to brave this.

As she puts it, vulnerability is usually thought of as the center of grief, shame, fear, and disappointment. But it is also the birthplace of love, belonging, authenticity, creativity, and courage. This is because to be vulnerable means to allow ourselves to be seen. And when you protect yourself from being seen, you cannot expose yourself to love and connection.

Brown's research on shame reveals a core difference between guilt and shame. She notices that guilt is the fact and awareness of misconduct and mistakes. Shame is the internalization of this guilt and the conflation of it with self-identity. It's the difference between "I've made a mistake" and "I am a mistake" (Brown, TedTalk: Youtube).

Healthy skeptics may say, "that's extreme. Of course, I've done things in the past, but I don't really consider myself a mistake because of them." But the fact is, everyone has done this. It's evident in people who justify their lack to the mistakes they've made. It's seeing your own detachment, loneliness, or few friends coupled with the idea that you're not made for this world. It's not being able to find real love and connection because "there's just something about me." "If I weren't so [fill in the blank], maybe I could find more of what I want in life." "I am a magnet for disaster." "I am lacking, and the things that happen in my life are proof of it." This is guilt imbued in your identity as shame.

Shame works to keep us from believing in vulnerability as substantial work. Paradoxically, as is the nature of vulnerability, the key to unlocking guilt and freeing yourself from shame is to understand, embrace, and practice being vulnerable.

Important to remember, the goal is not to vilify shame or absolve it in hopes of eradicating disaster entirely. Instead, listen to these patterns of feeling and behavior to highlight key areas in need of attention.

Unmet needs, insecurities, and shame manifest in different ways for different reasons. If you feel anxious, you may need safety, stability, and security in your life. If you are resentful, you need to feel heard, understood, and noticed. Numb tells a lack of support and safety. Disconnection needs to be noticed, loved, and prioritized. Distrust needs honesty, openness, and loyalty.

This brings us to the anatomy of Trust.

The Anatomy Of Trust - Brené Brown

Another unique aspect of Brown's work is the interconnectedness of the concepts she researches to explain and support her other findings. Her "Anatomy of Trust" breaks down 7 components for a trusting relationship--one that's flexible to hardship and built to last. She describes trust as choosing to make what's important to you vulnerable to the uncertainty and actions of someone else (Brown, TedTalk).

The Seven Components:

1. Boundaries

The knowledge, expression, and acceptance that both people have firmly set boundaries in need of respect and are willing to respect the boundaries of others.

2. Reliability

The knowledge that people are going to be consistent about their behaviors and actions, and understand their affordances and limitations, so as to avoid underperformance and inconsistency. You cannot be reliable once, but every time to gain trust.

3. Accountability

You are allowed and willing to own your mistake, apologize, amend, and learn from it without judgment. And the other person is allowed and willing to own their mistake, apologize, amend, and learn from it without judgment.

4. The Vault

Honoring information held in confidence between two people and in all relationships. Respecting the concept of confidentiality by sharing only information that is yours to share.

5. Integrity

The willingness to practice your moral values over speed and comfort, placing emphasis and meaningful work into your values to show your commitment to trusting actively.

6. Non-Judgment

The mutual understanding that both people are allowed to fall and grapple without judgment.

7. Generosity

Make generous assumptions about people's actions and behaviors, even if they are hurtful, and check in with those actions to understand the intentions, so as to avoid blame and grudge-holding.

These components aren't only useful for relationship-building between two people but are the fundamental units of vulnerability. They can be observed and practiced as isolated exercises to better understand it. These components define what it means to "be open." It means to allow yourself exposure to uncertainty with the guarantee that both successes and failures will happen.

When we come to believe that vulnerability only exposes us to harm and failure. Taking risks only opens the door for bad experiences. And the idea becomes how to control for only good, how to minimize the chances of disaster. But the truth is, we don't have a filter--only a doorway. You can choose to keep it closed, protect yourself, and remain invisible to love and connection. With vulnerability, you can widen your intake for opportunity and chance these happenings.

Catastrophizing Joy:

Brown describes catastrophizing moments of happiness as preparation for disaster. It's a way of accepting joy as fleeting, something that is not granted as constant, reliable, deserved. Reality is pictured as a grey landscape with only small gems here and there. By doing this, we prepare ourselves with the narrative that bad things are coming in order to cope when the moment does arrive. Vulnerability seems counterintuitive--like a catalyst for death or the action of taking off your armor right before entering the battlefield.

Vulnerability and Trust, however, can help to deconstruct this image and understand uncertainty as the grounds for both positive and negative happenings. Happiness and Disaster need to be understood as isolated systems. One does not devalue or diminish the presence and existence of the other. Neither contributes to our self-worth as individuals. Realizing this can stop negativity from feeding into shame.

Practicing Gratitude:

Gratitude enters the picture to mentally combat uncertainty by highlighting stability and constants in your life.

In a world where we look for the extraordinary--new opportunities to make us feel alive, inspired, curious, innovative--it's crucial to remember the power of the past and present. Beyond mere recollection of the past and appreciation for the present, gratitude can cultivate joy without catastrophe.

The first time you try a gratitude journal, which consists of listing everything you are grateful for, you may find yourself running out of things to write fairly quickly. And by the end of a few days, believing you made it that far, you'll find that most of the answers don't change. Often thought of as a sign of a boring, unstimulated lifestyle, the unwavering nature of the list is precisely the point of the exercise. It's meant to highlight ordinary moments of joy, demonstrate their consistency, and nod toward the fact that happiness can exist independently of Disaster.

Cosmicomics - Italo Calvino

It's an exceptional human talent to forget interconnectedness and belonging, to alienate yourself from the world purely with your mind. And when you find yourself at that point, it doesn't even help to hear the words, "you are loved and you belong."

What we need to understand is that the universe is us. And we are the universe. We are not just a part of it. We are born from it.

I bring up Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics to demonstrate the interconnectedness of science and faith. In this work, Calvino writes short fiction stories with characters living in the universe before conceptions of space, time, and gravity. A unique characteristic of his writing is his inclusion of a scientific fact or theory to capture the theme and commence the narrative.

"All at One Point" begins with this:

"Through the calculations begun by Edwin P. Hubble on the galaxies' velocity of recession, we can establish the moment when all the universe's matter was concentrated in a single point, before it began to expand in space" (Calvino 43).

The narrator, Qfwfq, goes on to tell the story of the universe before there was a universe, saying:

"Naturally, we were all there. . . . Every point of each of us coincided with every point of each of the others in a single point . . . neither before nor after existed, nor any place to immigrate from. . . . And all of this, which was true of me, was true also for each of the others" (Calvino, 43-47).

I highlight these passages to remind ourselves that "belonging isn't erasable, but it is forgettable" (Brown, Youtube). We are connected to people and materials in dimensions unfathomable to human consciousness. We need to remember this.

In our everyday lives, "we are bound in a connective tissue that fills the hiatus between our discontinuities, between our deaths and births, a collection of signs, articulated sounds, ideograms, morphemes, numbers, punched cards, magnetic tapes, tattoos, a system of communication that includes social relations, kinship, institutions, merchandize, advertising posters . . . namely everything that is language, in the broad sense" (Calvino, 239).

Another theory commencing a different short story harkens back to Brené Brown's conception of the human condition as a vulnerable thing. It says, "The logic of cybernetics, applied to the history of the universe, is in the process of demonstrating how the galaxies, the solar system, the Earth, cellular life could not help but be born. According to cybernetics, the universe is formed by a series of feedbacks, positive and negative" (83)

Here, we may realize that the universe, the earth, and our lives are not affected by positive and negative but are made up of positive and negative. They need to be embraced as one with growing and experience, not as enemy forces pushing and pulling our journey.

Vulnerability is the master key to all of life's facets. It is life. Embracing and practicing can only help the process.

These doors are opportunities and failures, affordances and limitations, euphoric highs and terrifying lows. It's important to remember that these doors are not gateways or goalposts. They are not lines to cross, markers toward better living. The key will not work to prevent you from experiencing hurt. Doors will appear in your life. Good ones will open. Bad ones, you'll walk right into and slam your face. But the key will allow you to pass through the door with the support and strength to keep walking afterward, knowing you're still worthy to keep going.

It is true; you learn quite a lot when you put in the work to understand why things happen. Keep vulnerability on your keychain, and listen to the sound of the metal chiming as you walk. It will always be with you.