Vulnerability

David Whyte, Krista Tippet Interview, On Being, December 27, 2018 "...the deeper discipline of poetry is overhearing yourself say things you didn’t want to know about the world, something that actually emancipates you from this smaller self out into this larger dispensation that you actually didn’t think you deserved."

Well, I always say that poetry is language against which you have no defenses. "

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.
To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances, is a lovely illusionary privilege and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human and especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically given up, as we approach our last breath.
The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant, and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.
“Vulnerability.”
I found this word powerfully just a few days ago in a passage from the Daily Reflections, December 29, page 372  "The joy of living. The joy of good living is the theme of the 12th step. AA is a joyful program. Even so, I occasionally balk at taking necessary steps to move ahead, and I find myself RESISTING the very actions that could bring about the joy I want. I would not resist if those actions did not touch some vulnerable area of my life, an area that needs HOPE & FULFILLMENT. Repeated exposures to joyfulness has a way of softening the hard outer edges of the ego. Therein lies the power of JOYFULNESS to help all members."

And so the journey continues to clarify and reveal. Thanks to Krista and David... AGAIN.

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