Anam Cara

The Pain of Exposure

Vulnerability is an infinitely precious thing. There is nothing as lonely as that which has become hardened. When your heart hardens, your life has become numb. Yeats says, “Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.” Though vulnerability leaves one open to pain, one should somehow still be ultimately glad of vulnerability. Part of our origin lies in the Darwinian kingdom of species competition and adaptation. Some instinct within us knows that we must be careful about exposure. We cannot let the heart be too easily seen, or we will get hurt. Everyone gets hurt. The extreme response to hurt is to close the heart. Yet to make yourself invulnerable is to lose something very precious. You put yourself outside the arena of risk where possibility and growth are alive. Vulnerability risks hurt, disappointment, and failure. Yet it remains a vital opening to change and to truth. We should not see our vulnerability as something we need to hide or get over. The slow and difficult work of living out your vulnerability holds you in the flow of life. It is great when we can learn to behold our vulnerability as one of the most important gates of blessing into the inner world. In giving love we are most human and most vulnerable.