Truth be told, even more than success, control or the effective management of ones life, what we really want from other people is their humanity.
And, by humanity, we mean vulnerability. In fact (if we were really honest), we privately despise the UNvulnerable person, don't we? We want to be like them...AND we don't.
Let's break this down a bit.
In our perhaps less thoughtful moments, we love successful people or, at least, we think we do. But, why then do we also almost fetishize their downfalls (loving that almost more)?
Perhaps this is because we like to think of the possibility of success in our own lives and often live that vicariously through the success of others. We could be successful, too, IF we really wanted to.... We also know, however, that we are often not what we like to think we are (or even could be). More often, the best we do is have moments of flashing success. But, we never sustain it, especially perfectly. In fact, we have a love-hate relationship with ourselves about that reality — loving the notion of what we could be (and sometimes are) and hating ourselves when we are not that.
This is both an unfortunate and vicious construct. The only relief we get from the resulting trauma it often creates is when we acknowledge the both-and nature of it. And, this happens more often than not when we see vulnerability in someone else first and when that allows us to forgive ourselves for our imperfections.
Even that is a rather silly way of framing it. But, we still relentlessly drift towards it, don't we? It must, somehow, be useful to us. I suspect it's utility is primarily based in its distraction, when it really could much more be the means of being liberated from the tyranny of it.
No one is perfect or successful all the time. We wouldn't ever publicly admit to wanting to be. Yet, we do.
The emotion we often feel when we experience genuine vulnerability is the salve for the wounds we create for ourselves from it. We see it in ourselves, but are afraid to admit it (out loud). But, when someone else does, we breathe a sigh of relief as much for our own sakes as anything else. They are like me. I am like them. We are alike, in our vulnerability as human-beings — we call this collective experience our humanity. Vulnerability reinstates the permission we need to give ourselves to be more fully what we really are...human. Not things like successful. Human. Together.
It is that last notion that really captures the concept here. Our greatest vulnerabilities are really with each other — our greatest successes and deepest failures...combined. In spite of some of those who have tried not to be, we by and large are social creatures (what isn't, in fact?). The isolation we impose on ourselves through arbitrary constructs, like success, is really quite...unnatural.
Vulnerability is like a connector...it connects you to the rest of the world.
-- Phil Stutz
Some of how we can learn to get better at this kind of thing is to develop a better relationship with the false binaries of our discomfort with our knowing and our not knowing — with things like our fears and pain. In the end, we have to hold ambiguity, inter-dependence, and the unknown in much more healthy ways. This read about collapse and catastrophe is a helpful consideration.
