I have tried to be vulnerable. I have tried to cultivate a willingness to show my soft underbelly and not worry that the world will eviscerate me like one of those Jurassic Park velociraptors. Spilling my entrails upon the ground. I wonder how that will go for me? Because as I’m writing this, only the first eighteen essays of my Values project have been published.
And If Taylor Swift has taught me anything, it’s that haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.
She didn’t really teach me that. I knew that before she told me. She just made it catchy. And she helps me to remember to shake it off. Shake it off.
I have talked many times about my friends that I stole from. I have written about my rage, and my proclivities toward violence. I have written about my weaknesses. My softnesses. My frustrations. I have written things that make my wife squirm in her seat just a little bit. I have written about breaking that girl’s heart in the Phillipines. I have written about my journey out of church, and I’ve written about the Order of the Mustard Seed.
These are vulnerable points in my life.
I worry that people will see me differently if they know I’ve been dishonest, told lies, stolen money, left church. I wonder if I’ll lose people if I tell them I’m a member of a lay monastic order. That’s so weird and I know it.
I worry that I’ll lose people when I quote Rage Against the Machine lyrics. I worry that I’ll lose people when I subtly, (or not so subtly) expose my politics.
But I cannot help myself. I will not. And the ability to throw caution to the wind in this way is a sort of privilege I enjoy. It’s a privilege cocktail involving age and occupation and yes, even whiteness. I don’t have to care what you think of me. I know what my family thinks of me. I know what my friends think of me. It’s enough. The relationships and the satisfaction and the love I have banked now is enough for me.
Still, I hope that my willingness to embrace and not reject softness will reap rewards. What are the rewards?
I hope my softness will show other men in particular that softness is an option. If I don’t have to be hard and impermeable in my writing, maybe you don’t have to be hard or impermeable to your family or friends.
The truth is that I’m aiming for a reward. There is enough of an inflated sense of my own potential left within me that I imagine I might be a small part of changing the world. It seems worth it. But I still wonder what could happen.
As I said, at the time of this writing almost twenty of my essays have been published. There are more than forty more in the can. I’m pretty happy with all of them, but they get raw. By the time this one publishes you will have learned a number of potentially embarrassing things about me and I’ll have said the f-word about twelve times in the obedience essay. I do not know what will happen. I am feeling vulnerable.
I am nervous. Right NOW is when I found my voice. About twenty essays in. I watch the read counts, I watch the statistics. I wonder what will happen when people read freedom. Devoutness. Honesty. A world at peace. Obedience.
Will I fall in your eyes? Already I have realized that at least one of my essays was inconsiderate to my wife and that put me on my back foot. I felt I was being open and honest about a situation in our shared life and she felt a little exposed. This is not a burn book. This is not a grievance blog. I’m not trying to hurt anybody.
I am, in truth, nervous. Frightened even. Because this has been such a great experience in my life—writing these essays. And what if nobody likes them? Time will tell, I suppose. Regrets, I’ve had a few. But then again, too few to mention.
But then, I wonder if I could even be destroyed anymore? What if everyone hates the words I write? It will be enough for me to have written them. And anyway, not everyone will hate them, indeed there are already people who like them.
What if my business fails? It will be enough to have built something beautiful. It’s already been something wonderful in my community, it’s already been an important part of many people’s days over many years. I’ve had the conversations I’ve had. I’ve learned the lessons I’ve learned. I’ve grown, I’ve changed as a person and grown as a father and a husband, a friend, an entrepreneur, and even as a laborer.
What if I lose everything? I will still have my family. They will never leave me alone. My friends have already made their sacrifices for me. I will always have room on a hundred benches and my plate will never be empty.
So why would I harden and protect myself anymore? I have already won. I have already won.
It is a great place of privilege, as I reflect, to feel so secure. And I don’t want to squander my position. We know we live but once! And vulnerability is, I think, a sort of spending. A way to spend your life and your position and your privileges in the service, (hopefully) of others.
Brené Brown talks a lot about this stuff. I just rewatched a Ted Talk she did earlier in her public career. I think it was probably the first thing I’d ever heard from her and I watched it again just now. In it she talks about being really resistant to vulnerability. At least initially. She essentially, (my reading), says that vulnerability is a precursor to connection. To a feeling of connection. A sense of belonging. And that really clicks with me. It makes me feel lucky, because as I said, I do value vulnerability in my life, I practice it, I steel myself against crippling embarrassment, and I intentionally choose to uncover my softened bits.
And I do feel a deep sense of belonging in my life. A deep sense of connection with my family, with my friends. With the natural world and with the animals I care for and the land I steward.
And the other thing I want to foster and steward in my life is my understanding of how lucky I am to have these options. Because for some folks, trans folks, Black folks, lady folks, it can be a really different story. I can share myself without a lot of fear of rejection or retribution and I know not everyone experiences life this way. This is a value that I am lucky to be able to practice as freely as I do.
I am embarrassingly rich in my life.
