“The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.” – David Whyte
Here we are in 2022. Are you feeling challenged as you look around you for some kind of familiarity, a sort of order or direction?
This post is perhaps an invitation to get up close and personal with your vulnerability whilst so much is shifting and changing in the world. What happens in the recesses of your mind as you ponder on the year that’s been or you wonder what the year ahead might bring? Can we, as David Whyte suggests, fully inhabit our vulnerability and hold on to the courageous and the compassionate aspects of ourselves whilst also grieving the loss of structure, familiarity, of loved ones, of life as we once knew and anticipated it? And whilst also putting one foot in front of the other in our day to day lives.
Perhaps we can ponder on whether vulnerability is something we can allow, embrace, wrap ourselves in in the most gentlest of ways, as we hold on to ourselves and show up in the world? Does it need to be an either/ or I wonder, or can we graciously bring all of ourself to the table? What would that take, what would we let go of, allow, or ask of ourselves, from the inside out?