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Open The Gates
Assuming you FIRST engage your protective instincts, your VULNERABILITY is the most precious thing you have. For artists, lovers, or martial artists. For all three, you have to be honest, open, capable of looking at your life as it is, and was, and pull out the truths that help you tell great stories, make honest connection, connect with both fear and ferocity.
I’ve lost count of the people who have tried to convince me that vulnerability is a flaw. Sometimes it’s hard not to get suckered into almost believing them. Thanks for pointing out the truth.
Without vulnerability, we cannot have empathy, sensitivity, honest communication, passion, perhaps love itself. But without strength, we cannot protect our softness, end up begging for allies rather than baring our teeth.
Everyone needs both. If we don’t have our own strength, that is often a fear of the damage we will take, the harshening of our sensitivity, even the dulling of our senses as we smash into and against the world that threatens.
But if we DON’T have our own strength, then we either retreat from righteous adversity, yield to it, or ask OTHERS to take that position. THEY then have the responsibility to face those challenges, take that damage, shut down their softness and learn to ignore or bottle their emotions. They bleed and callous FOR us.
When people do not embrace BOTH their strength and softness, they are rejecting half of what makes them alive. Not “human” — animals…