The topic of vulnerability has evoked the five years in high school when I took Latin classes. That painstaking learning process brought me out of my comfort zone in using my native language but taught me the importance of words. The Latin word vulnus means wound, the result of an attack or of a harmful situation. Today taking the chance to be hurt emotionally or physically may or may not be a choice.
Minorities can be discriminated against for the color of their skins they’re born with or teenagers can have hard times in transitioning to new gender choices. Sometimes circumstances can bring relationships to end, bringing us to lose emotional “centers” of our lives.
When vulnerability is a choice, it surely is a courageous one. It’s the choice to leave our comfort zone to shift to open spaces, different horizons. This change usually starts with recognizing our limits, our brokenness, in order to share it with the rest of the world.
This is when the “learning” starts, when new foundations become possible and a blurry vision can turn into a plan. There is no learning without mistakes we can move on and learn from. Vulnerability is a state of mind that defines limits as start points of change and growth. It’s the Choice to keep our minds, hearts and souls open to the new around us.
Vulnerability needs also to be the beginning of all hard conversations. The authenticity we need to infuse these with can come only with a balance between use of our strengths and an awareness of our biases, misconceptions or ignorance. Sometimes ideas, thoughts and beliefs we hold as truths can crumble when faced with realities we turn our eyes and souls away from.
Truth can make us then feel vulnerable. Embracing the world around us with its inconvenient truths and bringing the change we want in it are possible only with love, compassion and vulnerability. There are plenty of people around us that authentically want to start the change walking beside us. Let’s offer them our vulnerability to make our-selves stronger together. ~ Marco Messori, UUFA Board Member
