Poem: Vulnerability

Saturday Poem

Vulnerability

Vulnerability is the power
to dive into your loss to find your love.

~You are vulnerable

when you are willing

to dive into your wounds and feel your pain.

~Why go through that agony?

Why feel the unbearable pain,

the childhood orphanhood,

the unforgettable betrayal

of those who should have loved

me and injured me instead?

Why not move on?

After all, I’m an adult, I own my life now.

~ In the depth of those memories the betrayal lingers,

a thick quagmire of old, undiluted emotions:

your Emotional Undertow.

It infects old wounds and new wounds alike.

There is no recovery without release

And you cannot release what you don’t revisit.

It is difficult if not impossible for the mind to grasp

that the injury was originally inflicted in the place of your potency.

In the depth of that raw, bleeding wound a miracle emerges.

Your Personal Medicine is brewing there,

ready for you to heal yourself and others.

~ Vulnerability makes you face your silliest, most costly mistakes.

~ Why go there? Why expose my failures and misadventures?

Won’t that make me look bad?

Won’t that weaken my credibility?

Won’t that sabotage my leadership?

Won’t it throw doubt on my capability?

Others can and will use it against me.

~ Yet…

Those mistakes are the laboratory

where your genius discovers

the new science that advances human wellbeing

and masters the new art that inspires the human spirit

It is during that stumbling that you make the biggest leaps

that only you can achieve

if only you are willing to make, allow and examine your mistakes.

~Vulnerability is the ability to accept your frailty and be naked with it in front of the world.

~Why on earth would I do this?

Why expose myself to ridicule, rejection and disadvantage?

Why let everyone, why let anyone see me at my worst?

Won’t they see my weakness and despair?

Won’t they use my weakness to attack and discredit me?

Why should I sit in the place of helplessness and debility,

like a clown entertaining others with its guffaws.

~In your achievement as well as in your failures

People will see, understand and share

only what they can receive:

only what they themselves are and allow.

That is not for you to control.

But in sharing your humanity, with blemishes exposed

and cracks wide open;

you lay a healing hand on the stigma and fissure aching your fellow humans.

You give them a chance to be compassionate

with themselves and their flaws,

to accept these imperfections

so that they can embrace their full dimension.

Only through this empathy,

Through this delicate unity,

can we come to embrace our wholeness

and in that wholeness own our true strength.

~ Vulnerability uncovers your most terrifying fears.

It launches you deep into the darkness of your Shadows and your orphanhood.

It stirs the mud at the bottom of the Emotional Undertow

that you’ve been carrying for years, perhaps centuries,

bringing the rubble to the surface.

~Why cloud the waters?

Why expose my muck?

Isn’t that water under the bridge?

Why not focus on solutions?

Why not feed my virtues and my values?

I choose enlightenment.

Why look at the filth under my nails?

~Under your nails lies the DNA of the things you fiercely fight,

The very things you want and pray for.

Under your nails you find your prints.

You discover the fiber along which your true being runs.

Vulnerability is the superpower that lets you know

That you are perfect for your purpose

Exactly as you are right now.

————————

Maria Mar ©2014

New York, NY

If you like this poem, you may want to subscribe to my monthly Life is Poetry Newsletter.

Send to Kindle