Vulnerability Quotes
“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, air-less—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
C. S. Lewis
“Stoicism is not just invulnerability…if such a thing even exists. Stoicism is also having the self-awareness to know when you are struggling. It’s having the courage to admit when you could use a hand. It’s having the wisdom not to pretend you know the answer (you can’t learn that which you think you already know, Epictetus says). It takes daring and toughness to go to therapy—perhaps more than just white knuckling it. It’s a brave thing to share your struggles with a friend or to hire a coach or expert to help you get better at something. It takes a confident person to ask a question or admit, ‘I don’t know.’ Don’t be like the cowards who are too fragile or fearful to do this. Be truly courageous.”
Ryan Holiday
“If I am transparent enough to myself, then I can become less afraid of those hidden selves that my transparency may reveal to others. If I reveal myself without worrying about how others will respond, then some will care, though others may not. But who can love me, if no one knows me? I must risk it, or live alone. It is enough that I must die alone. I am determined to let down, whatever the risks, if it means that I may have whatever is there for me.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 26) | ★ Featured in Matt’s Blog.
“If vulnerability grows along with power, there is no fear that power will be abused.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 94)
“Openness is vulnerability. When you are open, you feel at the same time that something wrong can enter you. That is not just a feeling; it is a possibility. That’s why people are closed. If you open the door for the friend to come in, the enemy can also enter. Clever people have closed their doors. To avoid the enemy, they don’t even open the door for the friend. But then their whole life becomes dead. But there is nothing that could happen, because basically we have nothing to lose—and that which we have cannot be lost. That which can be lost is not worth keeping. When this understanding becomes tacit, one remains open.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 67)
“Finding words where words were absent before and, as a result, being able to share your deepest pain and deepest feelings with another human being… This is one of the most profound experiences we can have, and such resonance, in which hitherto unspoken words can be discovered, uttered, and received, is fundamental to healing the isolation of trauma—especially if other people in our lives have ignored or silenced us. Communicating fully is the opposite of being traumatized.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 237) | ★ Featured on this book list.
“Most vulnerability we see today
Cole Schafer (January Black), One Minute, Please? (Page 93)
isn’t true vulnerability.
It’s convenient vulnerability.
It’s being vulnerable to better one’s
position in the public eye.
It’s conditional vulnerability.
It’s this idea that one will only be
vulnerable in situations where it’s
advantageous to one’s self.
Being vulnerable should be a selfless act.
It’s making the difficult choice of sharing
raw painful truths in hopes to build
something beautiful from that suffering.”
