Vulnerability

We are all vulnerable. We think it a curse. It leads to doubt and fear and error. It makes us weak and susceptible to all manner of bad choices and tragedies. A recent replay on Bill Moyers’ Journal, regarding Lyndon Johnson’s private telephone conversations during the period leading toward the Vietnam tragedy, reminded me of the enormous implications of one man’s vulnerabilities. In his phone conversations, LBJ affirmed what every anti-war protestor knew: that the Vietnam conflict was a war of national liberation; that further involvement in this war would create a quagmire from which it would be hard to escape; that the war was not winnable. So, why did LBJ persist? Because, as he admitted privately in several phone calls, he would look weak if he did not prosecute the war, and worse, to his mind, he would be pilloried by the Republicans for this perceived weakness. We all know where his vulnerabilities led us, and who and how many paid the price. In the end, LBJ had to withdraw from the run for the presidency in 1968; he had been defeated. If he had resisted his vulnerabilities and pulled out of Vietnam, he might have lost the election, but at least his historical honor would have been preserved.

Tiger Woods’ recent display of human vulnerability is not to be found in his libido as much as in his bad judgement of character (i.e., his own character and that of his co-respondents); the tawdry leaps into bed with every cocktail waitress and wannabe actress within sight (Maureen Dowd in the NY Times cautions that men should avoid liaisons with young women who have 8 x 10 glossies to hand out); and, his far too easy (or non-existent?) conception about what constitutes virtue and fidelity. More than this, as a young man who demanded the privilege of privacy, who accepted the image of integrity necessary to represent a wide range of commercial products, and who claimed superiority to his other colleagues in a game which demands individual honesty on the course, he failed to live up to the persona he had consciously created around himself. Raised by doting parents, he learned the value of keeping everything within the family -- tight to his chest -- and with tenaciously pursuing one’s own success, and that success alone. Now, he is facing the hardest contest of his entire life, one that none of us ever completely wins – admitting and exposing one’s biggest weaknesses and vulnerabilities to others.

President Barack Obama has his own weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which we are not yet able to portray exactly. “Hope” now seems remote; “audacity” has given way to “timidity”; “Yes We Can” is now “maybe we can’t.” Rhetoric and reality are drifting farther apart in “America-the-political,” and the President seems to have no more immunity from this drift than any average politician.

On the other hand, if we were not vulnerable, we would be monsters. In a culture like ours, with its emphasis on autonomy, individuality, and personal agency, invulnerability would be an invitation to Thomas Hobbes’s “war of all against all.” Madeleine L’Engle (an American writer for young adults who believed in universal salvation) said: “When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.” Vulnerability is what allows us to love one another. Marriages, partnerships, relationships, and friendships necessarily include identifying and accepting the vulnerabilities of those near us, and exposing the vulnerabilities we have to those we love. This is not easy. Most of us believe that we must pursue friendships without showing weakness. As Walter Anderson (an American painter with a lifelong struggle with mental illness) said, “We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone – but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.” Vulnerability equals humility, a humility that oddly leads in turn to human solidarity.

No season reminds me of our vulnerability as much as Christmas. For some, simple and pure Christian joy may push fears and doubts aside. For many, however, the holiday season raises expectations of happiness and community that are false, expectations that can never be fulfilled. It can easily become a season of failure and depression, as studies and statistics readily demonstrate.

If emotional vulnerability reigns among so many of us around the winter solstice, the poignancy of material vulnerability – of persons and sometime whole societies having poor or no housing, of having little food and inadequate clothing, of receiving no education, and possessing no vision of a personal future – is exponentially greater. The Copenhagen summit on climate change illustrated just how central and profound world poverty is in the discussion of any topic. We would all be well served to remember this, and do something about this material poverty not only in the holiday season but all year long as well. We would be best served to recognize, address, and mitigate insofar as possible those personal, public, and political vulnerabilities – the primary vulnerabilities of feelings and emotions, of compromised thoughts and actions -- which now hinder hope for both the world’s material and non-material future.