Vulnerability

I realized, as I was approaching this subject, vulnerability, that although the definition hasn’t changed over the years, the meaning has.. This is what I really want to explore. As I’ve changed so has the experience of being vulnerable. Along with the change of meaning, I think the impact of vulnerability is also changing. If this is so, then vulnerability, of a sort, heralds a change of capability that I think might be important to note.

Being vulnerable actually means putting yourself potentially in harms way. It’s a deliberate act. An act, that involves giving up all forms of protection and standing out undefended. One is vulnerable because one has elected to defy the probability of harm in favor of some other less probable outcome, and in the process one has made themselves totally subject, wellbeing wise, to the moment. Being vulnerable is a kind of exposure to risk.

This squares with my early experiences of vulnerability. I don’t like being vulnerable very much. Even to this day. In the early days I really didn’t like it. My experience of vulnerability was accompanied with a sense of fear. If I became vulnerable it was usually an accident, or a situation where I felt out of control, and in over my head. The experience of being exposed was very vivid and beyond my control. I always felt threatened, destined for a kind of jeopardy. The unpleasantness of the experience was always a feeling of naked smallness before something greater.

The smallness I felt, the involuntary nature of what befell me, made the experience one that was seared into my awareness, and one I didn’t want to have again. I couldn’t perceive any benefit, any reason to want to voluntarily have the experience of being vulnerable. Life was hard enough, scrabbling to have a place at the table.

In those days I was very aware of what, and who, was around me. I chose to act out of my awareness of my external situation. I wanted desperately to fit in. I felt vulnerable when I didn’t, when I couldn’t. My sense of vulnerability didn’t really have a voluntary component, not unless one was insane, or masochistic. Vulnerability was a sign of weakness, a sign that one didn’t have the ability to cope with Life.

Thankfully, after years of feeling vulnerable, believing myself to be defective, unable to cope with the complexity of Life, things changed. I ripened into another kind of awareness. Sure, I spent years in therapy, doing spiritual practice, being a social activist, having challenging relationships, discovering what being a man was, and working on myself. These things contributed, but what really brought everything together, was something I had no control over. I, inexplicably, ripened into a new bigger, more complex being. Now I feel vulnerable differently.

Being vulnerable now is more of a voluntary experience. I can still get caught up and overwhelmed by the moment, but it tends to be less unpleasant than it used to be. I have learned through living and practiced desire to regulate myself. I have more choice now. Thankfully. I may have feelings, I probably do, but I have a lot more discretion about revealing them. I can be feeling-full and discrete.

Being vulnerable can be a lot of things, but here, I want to focus upon the voluntary display of the amalgam of complex feelings that makes vulnerability a strength not a weakness. Vulnerability has an infectious nature. That doesn’t mean others feel the same thing in the same way, but it does mean that others are impacted, they notice. Vulnerability is composed of a set of human emotions that communicate something important.

As I’ve grown older I have begun to find a more existential kind of humor funny. I can’t help but smile, sometimes, when something makes me recognize the hilarious situation I’m in. Sometimes, I can’t help being impressed by how funny being here is. I often laugh at my own difficulties. I am so grateful I can.

Vulnerability seems similar to me. I am incredibly vulnerable if I let myself know the fix I’m in. What’s more, is that I can feel vulnerable if I really get the fix some one else is in. The truth is, that for me, the human condition makes me feel pretty vulnerable. I guess that is why I sometimes feel moved to let my vulnerability be seen. It seems to most accurately express the predicament that I find myself, and others, within.

Vulnerability, for me, means that I may laugh or cry. Being human is ridiculously hard. It makes me grieve, praise, laugh and cry. I am vulnerable from head to foot, in every moment, in every way, and I laugh, curse and wonder within such an incredible existence. Vulnerability seems to be my natural state, maybe yours too! Can we connect with each other around this shared experience? I believe we can. In part, that’s why I want others to see and know my vulnerability. Openness is vulnerable. It hurts good. So does living. Hah! What a humorous twist there is to this whole deal!

Happiness

Today I want to write about happiness. I don’t feel that I am any kind of expert on the subject. Probably my real reason for writing about it has to do with my own surprise that I am happier than I have ever been. I didn’t really expect to be happy. I never made it a particular focus (a priority) of my life either, so you can imagine my surprise and curiosity about this burgeoning feeling of well-being. A part of what I want to write has to do with my suspicion that my happiness has come with getting older.

What makes us happy? Probably, the answer to that question is as diverse as we humans are. Still, I can’t help but notice that I am experiencing a kind of happiness that doesn’t seem to be emanating from the world around me. I don’t know about you, but I grew up, until now, with the notion that when things, and I mean stuff like money, jobs, homes, relationships, vacations or enlightenment, lined up, then I would be happy. I have almost none of that today and I’m happier than ever, so what gives?

Happiness, at least for me, seems more to be an internal phenomenon rather than being something out there. The happiness I find in the world, I seem to find first in me. That is a radical change from the idea of happiness I first learned.  Strangely owning my own home doesn’t make me as happy as owning, and being comfortable, in my own skin. One is an economic achievement, the other is a harder-won acheivement with my self. The sense of being at home in my home is more gratifying and sustainable when I occupy myself.

Happiness has become more of a reality to me as I have aged. I don’t think that merely aging did it. I think something happened inside me. I ripened into happiness. For me the happiness accompanied my gratitude with living. I came through a lot, through a long time of being more dead than alive, through a time of realizing I was being given a second chance, and through being surrounded by a host of others, mainly old folks, who similarly struggled, endured and found a way to happily persevere. It appeared that I was happy because Life had put me through the wringer and I had emerged more solid than I once had been.

I came to being happy not because I aged, but because I aged well. What do I mean? Well, I’m still formulating this, but it seems that I have something to do with the fact of my happiness despite being disabled, and having to ask others for help (a widespread fear), and having no insurance (the economic social net), I am still somehow happy. I know, in part, it’s the company I keep, but I also know I can keep company with some pretty unhappy people and retain my appreciation of Life. I am happy for no good conventional reason. No, I don’t think it is because I’m crazy. I’m weird but not over the bend. I’m happy for a non-conventional reason, because I’ve become what the Universe intended — myself.

If I sound a little like Walt Whitman, so be it. Life has shaped me into a misshapen, dysfunctional being, which is a horror story of possibility for anyone who really takes my life in, and has conferred happiness upon me. How can that be? I haven’t been able to believe it for the longest time. So I wouldn’t blame you, if you don’t. But, it seems with all that has gone wrong — with all that Life has put me through —happiness erupts.

I can explain it, at least I think I can. If words don’t fail me now, then I can explain that the miraculous (that’s how it sometimes seems to me) can happen in anyone’s life. Happiness is a by-product of inner life, not dependent upon anything external. It is what happens when one really gets how lucky they are to be in this vulnerable, teetering, human-scarred world. It isn’t a state of denial, a refusal to know just how bad things are, it is an appreciation of what is. I’m not happy because Life as we know it is in jeopardy. I’m happy because it exists, and I get to know it for a time.

My happiness emanates from the ground I wheel around upon. That is dirt for sure, earth of the most perishable sort. But it is more than that too. Not more, in the sense of other than that, rather in the sense of that extended. I am happy because I wheel upon the soil of my self. The two are not really two. The Universe, and Life on Earth, are composed of both, and both are part of the same thing — the life force of the Great Mystery. Check it out, it’s going on right beneath your feet, and right within you.

I’m happy now because I can perceive the movement of the whole happening most anyplace. It hurts, in some different kind of way, to experience so much denial, fear and hatred, but my sense of happiness can embrace those pains too. Mainly, because I can feel Life welling up, happiness wells with it.

That Much

There is a story that I love. I first came across this story when I read the prologue to Scott Peck’s book A Different Drum. I subsequently loved it even more when it was read at the beginning of every community-building workshop I ever attended. The story conveys something of the radical power of respect, and I share it with you because I am still learning its lessons.

“ There is a story, perhaps a myth. Typical of mythic stories, it has many versions. Also, typical, the version of the story you are about to experience is obscure. The story, called The Rabbi’s Gift, concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order, as a result of waves of anti-monastic persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth, all of its branch houses were lost and it had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the abbot and four others, all over 70 years in age Clearly it was a dying order.

In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. “The rabbi is in the woods, the rabbi is in the woods again,” they would whisper to each other. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.

The rabbi welcomed he abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. “I know how it is,’ He exclaimed. “The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.” So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. “It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet each other after all these years,” the abbot said, “but I still have failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would me save my dying order?”

“No I am sorry,” the rabbi responded. “I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that The Messiah is one of you.”

When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, “Well, what did the rabbi say?”

“He couldn’t help,” the abbot answered. “We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving —it was something cryptic — was that the Messiah is one of us. I don’t know what he meant.”

In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered the possible this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words. The Messiah is on of us? Could he possibly mean one of the monks here at the monastery? If that’s the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Bother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Eldred! Eldred gets crotchety at times. But, when you look back on it, even though he is a pain in people’s sides, Eldred is virtually always right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Eldred. But not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn’t mean me. He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God not me, I couldn’t be that much for You could I?

As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off off chance that each of the monks himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

Because the forest in which it was situated was so beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.

The story ends with the monastery being renewed and becoming a center of light. I’ve loved this story because it has had so much to say to me about the renewal of community, but as I was slowly typing the story into my computer, I found myself substituting in the word world, in my mind, for monastery. I have a feeling that if we could have the story’s kind of extraordinary respect universally, then a wider spread renewal could happen.

I primarily have loved this story because it has helped me to consider myself in a different light. Besides looking at myself as something unimaginable, and worthy of respect, I have been dwelling with the off hand chance that I could be “that much” to anyone. As I have come to respect that possibility, I have come to experience how much this world of others, means to me.  “That much” has turned into so much.

My regard for the possibility that I might not know myself well enough to be sure how much I could mean to another has turned out to increase my regard for everybody. I am learning that just opening to the possibility of being “that much” to anyone, opens me to noticing how everything is “that much” to me.

I share this with you, because I’m still leaning how to be and see “that much,” and because it means that much to me.