The Power of Vulnerability

I love TED Talks and ran across another one that I feel NEEDS sharing. Since some people don't have 20 minutes to watch the talk, I'll quote some from the transcript. [quote]We live in a vulnerable world. And one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability. The problem is -- and I learned this from the research -- that you cannot selectively numb emotion. You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. [/quote] [quote]The other thing we do is we make everything that's uncertain certain. Religion has gone from a belief in faith and mystery to certainty. I'm right, you're wrong. Shut up. That's it. Just certain. The more afraid we are, the more vulnerable we are, the more afraid we are. This is what politics looks like today. There's no discourse anymore. There's no conversation. There's just blame. You know how blame is described in the research? A way to discharge pain and discomfort.[/quote] [quote]And we perfect, most dangerously, our children. They're hardwired for struggle when they get here. And when you hold those perfect little babies in your hand, our job is not to say, "Look at her, she's perfect. My job is just to keep her perfect. Our job is to look and say, "You know what? You're imperfect, and you're wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging." That's our job. Show me a generation of kids raised like that, and we'll end the problems I think that we see today.[/quote] [quote] We pretend that what we do doesn't have an effect on people. We do that in our personal lives. We do that corporate. We pretend like what we're doing doesn't have a huge impact on other people.[/quote] [quote][b]To let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen; to love with our whole hearts, even though there's no guarantee. To practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we're wondering, "Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?" just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, "I'm just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive." Believe that we're enough. Because when we work from a place, I believe, that says, "I'm enough," then we stop screaming and start listening, we're kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves.[/b][/quote]