Vulnerability is the Privilege of Happy People
Vulnerability is the privilege of happy people…warmly connected people with thickly woven networks of support.
If we are afraid of vulnerability, we will unconsciously construct strategies to remain distant from others. The need to prove our point is a defense against closeness, diminishing the possibility for connection and understanding. Other defenses such as justifying, rationalizing, denying, and projecting are destructive in relationships.
Here’s the rub, we cannot be both defended and loved at the same time. We need to choose. And if we are not defended, we are going to be vulnerable.
That’s why vulnerability is the privilege of happy people.
The ultimate vulnerability lies within what the Buddha taught about the law of impermanence. That every blessed and cursed moment of our life is vulnerable to change. Change being the only thing we can truly hang our hat on.
The rock solidness of change makes us incredibly vulnerable, yet once we can wrap our minds around change as the constant anchor, we find a new security that absolutely nothing can shake. Really!
When we stop attempting to grasp everything that can never be grasped, we are no longer fighting to try to hold onto that which cannot be held onto. In that moment, this moment, we are no longer a victim of any circumstance.
Perhaps that’s liberation.
How do I know this? Because I’ve lived the buddhist definition of suffering. I’ve spent half a lifetime fighting with life…attempting to control people and circumstances that did not want to be controlled.
So vulnerability is the privilege of happy people, because happy people know we can’t be fully alive without being vulnerable, and to be vulnerable means we cannot control much beyond our own attitude, and not controlling anything means that we’re living in the rock solid dependable reality of constant change.
But don’t just take my word for it…..try your own experiment. See if you can be okay with things going the way they’re naturally want to go.