VULNERABILITY

Melissa Helser recently wrote, 

"True vulnerability will swallow up the lie, 'I have to do it alone.' It knows that the risk will not be without pain and heartache, but the reward will be connection. The reward will be the gift of being seen, even in your mess and mostly in your need.”

That's rather an eloquent way of saying something I've been feeling for a while now. I like it. The reward will be connection; in fact, connection is established through vulnerability. What a scary but beautiful thought.

In computing, a vulnerability is always a weakness. It's a flaw that could be exploited by something or someone malicious. It's a defect, a bug, a 'known issue'. But far from weakness, I think Melissa knows that it's actually a huge strength.

Sometimes we forget that we were once flowers who enjoyed the sunshine. When we were young, our petals opened up in love, freedom, joy, and the sky was endless and blue. Then something happened - maybe a series of things, that taught us how to close up. Pain, loneliness, and heartache entered our little worlds and they were never quite the same again - though we did long for the springtime we remembered.

And that's because vulnerability is a clear route to pain, just as much as it is a pathway to connection. It takes so much raw courage to be vulnerable, so much wisdom to pick your moments and your people. But as Melissa says, the reward is the gift of being seen - and let's be honest, I do think most of us want to be seen - 'even in our mess, and mostly in our need.'

I don't just want to be vulnerable. I want to be a person who sees other people find the sunshine; I want to be trusted, connected with, certain of the reality, the real reality that binds us together as humans. 

For me, vulnerability is the sort of opposite of a defect. It's a clear signal to the winter that whatever happens I'm going to live in the sunshine. It's a determination to be exactly who I'm designed to be, to allow and enable others to be exactly who they're designed to be, regardless of the past, overcoming the trials and troubles of our history.

And I don't want to be that on my own. I don't ever want to do that alone.