Vulnerability is a prerequisite to love
Vulnerability is asking for help
Vulnerability is sharing how I feel
Vulnerability is taking an emotional risk
Vulnerability is speaking my truth
Vulnerability is saying a hard thing without knowing how it will be received
Vulnerability is being open to being seen
I don’t often get nervous before having to speak in front of an audience. I have had enough experience and done enough work around being seen to find a place of comfort in the front of a room. The idea of everyone’s eyes on me no longer feels like a risk, no longer makes me feel especially vulnerable.
On Sunday afternoon, at the opening of a four day conference I am on the faculty of, I led 400 people in a guided visualization and grounding breath practice. Sitting on the stage I felt calm and grounded, steady in my voice, confident in my ability to hold the room. But over the course of the conference there were three moments that did push me to the edges of my comfort, that did feel like risks, that did bring up a felt sense of vulnerability.
On Monday night, as my co-facilitators and I were setting up our evening session, I could feel my nerves showing up. The steadiness of the previous afternoon was gone from my body, my breath arhythmic, and my mind racing. In the session we were preparing to lead, my role was to perform a version of toxic masculinity in which I would not pay attention while one of my co-presenters was speaking and then interrupt her to give the participants contradictory instructions. It was a session we had led twice before and each time the unannounced role play went so well that participants found themselves shooting daggers of ire in my direction even beyond the moment it was revealed that I had been acting and the entire scene had been created to bring into the room one of the more common experiences of patriarchal masculinity that shows up in the communities where we work.
Even though it was a role play and even though it was made clear in the room that I was just playing a character, acting in that way did not feel good in my body. To paint myself the villain in the exercise, to act out the embodiment of a set of values behaviors that I’ve been working so long to flush out of my system pushed me to the edge of my comfort zone. Although it was a character that I was playing, I felt like showing up in such a way might put at risk the relationships I had been cultivating. Although it was a character I was playing, it felt vulnerable putting myself on display to be judged, analyzed, critiqued.
On Tuesday night, I stayed up late to participate in a Machloket, an argument for the sake of heaven. I sat in conversation with two friends and colleagues in front of an audience of conference attendees and talked openly and with love about the differences in our perspectives, thoughts, and feelings about Israel, the war in Gaza, protests on college campuses, and the larger context that the last two years have been situated in.
In this conversation the vulnerability came not from playing a role, but from speaking my own truth. In this conversation I spoke from my own perspective, shared openly the questions that I have been wrestling with, posed challenges that I found in my friends’ arguments, and invited challenges to my own. In this conversation I got to model how speaking vulnerably in a container of love can open up space for people who disagree to listen with curiosity and actually hear each other.
At the end of the conversation, one of our trio turned to the audience and, gesturing to me and our third, said, “One thing I have to say about this conversation is that I love the two of them more than I did an hour ago.” On that we could agree.
On Wednesday night I found myself in a third consecutive fishbowl - this time by circumstance, not by design. After the conference ended, the participants departed, and the faculty had our final meeting, a few of us went into a side room to watch game one of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals between the New York Knicks and the Indiana Pacers. The game had started during our meeting but a few of us decided to watch the game on delay so we could experience it from start to finish. Inside the room we were a group of Knicks fans doing everything we could to avoid finding out what was happening in the game before we got a chance to experience it for ourselves. Outside the room some of our friends who were less invested in the outcome of the game turned it on to watch in real time.
As we in the tape delayed room were getting closer to the end of the game we started to notice a flurry of activity outside our room. People started gathering in the hallway, looking in through the windows. A few times people walked in and out to see where we were in the game. It was a bizarre experience. There were moments where I began to feel self-conscious, as though I was somehow on display. These people who were living in my future, who had knowledge about something that would emotionally impact me were gathering around to watch me have an emotional experience.
In the final minutes of the fourth quarter the Pacers were in the midst of a terrifying comeback and we in the room started getting very nervous. As the clock wound down the star player on the Pacers fired the ball towards the basket. It was a ridiculous shot and in the moments that the ball was bouncing around the rim I could feel inside of me my desire for the ball to not go in fighting against a deep knowing that this must be the reason they were all standing around watching us. They must all be watching to see how we in the room would react to our team losing a game we had been winning on an outrageous and devastating basket.
As the ball went through the hoop I sunk out of my chair and onto the floor - a moment, I later learned, that was captured on a friend's camera.
Reflecting on this moment I wondered what the vulnerability that I felt was rooted in: being seen in the ridiculousness of my sports fandom, being seen having a genuine emotional reaction to a game, getting to experience devastation at the entirely mundane and unimportant in a space where I had been taking on some of the heavier and heftier topics of conversation? Once I came out of the haze of a frustrating loss, the annoyance of being watched in my moment of despair, and the discomfort of being on display, I was able to experience something different. In reflection, I could see and feel the way that my wholeness was being celebrated, I could understand that by seeing more of me, by seeing a raw and unfiltered version of me, people in the community could feel closer to me.
In each of these moments where I found myself on display, bumping up against an edge of my comfort zone, and allowing a part of myself to be or feel at risk, I noticed that my vulnerability allowed the people who were watching me to feel more comfortable at their own edges, to feel less at risk when sharing their own stories, to invite into the room their own vulnerabilities, and to find themselves feeling closer to each other.