The power of vulnerability

"When a man is living, he is soft and supple.When he is dead, he becomes hard and rigid.When a plant is living, it is soft and tender.When it is dead, it becomes withered and dry.
Hence, the hard and rigid belongs to the company of the dead:The soft and supple belongs to the company of the living.
Therefore, a mighty army tends to fall by its own weight,Just as dry wood is ready for the axe.
The mighty and the great will be laid low;The humble and the weak will be exalted."

Lao Tzu "Tao Teh Ching"

Here is an excellent talk by Brene Brown on TED Talks "The power of vulnerability"

I was profoundly moved by this talk cause I have recognized the importance of vulnerability often. Numbing oneself seems to be a survival tactic that I personally have always both been talented in but also tirelessly rebelled against. I remember writing...

      The clouds collapsed, leaving me in a block of ice. My heart was in Antarctica and it was no holiday I enjoyed, there was no sight of penguins or polar bears, no presence of anything whatsoever. No feelings, no sense of beauty, no love, no hate, just a nothingness. Ice obstructs the movement of the soul, you become lifeless, the blood freezes in your veins. For two days I was an ice queen, did not care about anything, anyone, hurt people, but I guess this had been exactly the escape I had needed- a safe place where nothing made a difference. Yesterday, sitting on the street and feeling the wind and the Sun, I realised something- I mourned my heart, I longed for my insecurities and fears as well as love. The self-protective shutdown that my subconscious mind had performed was in fact the greatest enemy of all and THAT had made me loose everything- life, love, myself... I understood that I have to risk it all and trust it all, or let everything go cause there was no way I was going to stomach that ice age for another second. And as the wind blew from the south it slowly cracked the iceberg, the Sun melted its hard crust. I will always savour that blissful moment when I first heard my heartbeat again, when small scared quivering rays of light from my core of being peeked out with such exquisite tenderness, so fragile, it was an unbelievable experience. The first breath after was like a drink of water after a draught, I felt it consume the whole of me, caressing the born-again sensitiveness with a protective might. My breath had longed for my heart as well, being forbidden from there was like having had its child taken away from it. For long after just the experience of following the path of my breath made me cry from joy- is there anything more beautiful than the meeting of the heart and the soul? The beauty of it shattered me so completely. It’s just sad the way we have to experience the loss of something before experiencing that which was always there. 

And then there was peace.

Peace with my fears, peace with everything I can loose in this world. Without sensitivity there is nothing that matters, that realisation was so beautiful it made my heart ache. I so missed the pain and the joy connected to the pain. 

How wide is the range of human experience! How special and strong is every single human being, especially cause of their fragility! 

I still fight against the habitual falling into the clogs of self-numbing, but I will never stop to aspire towards continuous vulnerability and openness.