REsources for Living
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Imagine that you are standing in front of a group of colleagues, or your entire class, about to give a presentation. There are people in the room who can make decisions about your job opportunities or your grade, but more than that there are a whole bunch of folks watching who will decide in their own minds whether you are smart, whether you are entertaining, whether you are the sort of person they admire.
How do you feel?
Imagine that there is someone you really like, someone you think is cute, someone you’ve had enough chance to talk with to think that they’re funny, and that they have some of the same interests as you. You’re about to ask them if they would like to go out to dinner, or if they want to go to the upcoming school dance. You’re about to put your heart on the line, about to risk rejection, maybe even look like an idiot.
How do you feel?
Imagine that you have just walked into a church that you are hoping could possibly be your spiritual home. But you don’t know any of the people there. Worse than that, you don’t know how people usually dress for services, whether you will know how to sing the songs, whether the minister will say something hurtful about your beliefs or identity, whether you will know when to stand up, or whether anyone will even speak to you after the service.
How do you feel?
How you feel, I imagine, is vulnerable. Partly scared, partly hopeful, on the edge of something that might change your life through triumph or humiliation, connection or rejection, being welcomed in or being pushed out.
Vulnerability can be a terrifying experience, like walking a tightrope across an enormous canyon. Your heart beats faster, and your mouth gets dry while your palms get wet. It’s the sort of experience that you probably want to avoid like the plague. Except that those moments of vulnerability are absolutely the most important bits of your life. Without walking into those vulnerable moments there’s little chance for your life to change, because every change comes wrapped in loss or the possibility of defeat as well as the possibility of something amazing.
And we are vulnerable so often: every time we raise our hand to speak in class; every time we voice an opinion in a meeting; every time we speak to a stranger; every time we tell a loved one that we were hurt by something they said or did. We’re vulnerable when we admit that we don’t understand and whenever we ask for help. We’re vulnerable any time we walk into a group of people whose race or age or religion or ethnicity is different from our own. We’re vulnerable any time we create, and allow someone else to see our creation.
Basically, we’re vulnerable any time we put ourselves out there in the world, hoping for some real connection with another person. If we’re never vulnerable, the important parts of who we are and what we can do never see the light of day.
So we need ways to practice—little ways of putting ourselves out there and finding out that connecting is wonderful and rejection probably won’t actually kill us. Which is part of why I love Halloween. Yes, Halloween. Think about it. The tradition of Halloween is that you dress yourself up and spend the evening approaching people—many of whom you don’t know—to ask them to give you something.
Over and over you walk right up to someone’s door, not knowing if anyone is home, if they really want to see you, or if they will smile and drop something delicious in your bag. That’s a pretty vulnerable experience, and we offer it even to tiny little kids. And sometimes they’re shy, hiding behind older siblings or parents, reluctant to be seen.
But on Halloween you get to keep trying, keep showing up on doorsteps. Sometimes it turns out really scary, and a witch pops out from behind a door or a spider drops near your head. But for the vast majority of visits the person at the door is happy to see you, admires your costume and gives you candy. And even the scary things turn out not to be as dangerous as you might have thought at the time.
Of course, there are other ways to practice being vulnerable, and it’s surely something we need to do more than one evening a year. We need all the moments when we choose to talk to a stranger at a bus stop, or share a drawing or a poem we created, or express an opinion that’s different from what the teacher or the boss said. But maybe Halloween is a good time to remember that each person who walks up to our door or our church or our office or our group at lunchtime is doing something just a little bit vulnerable and brave, and that it matters that we offer them a smile of welcome.
- REsources for Living - December 1, 2020
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