Discipline of Vulnerability:
Learning to Live with the Unknown
06_13_2021
Discipline of Vulnerability: Learning to Live with the Unknown
To begin, let me share the definition I have in mind for the word, Discipline. It is a friendly definition that offers us a way or path forward. Think of Discipline as a branch of knowledge, something to study as a way of deepening our understanding as a means of benefitting from new insights.
At almost any stage of our lives we can be swamped with feelings of anxiety when we contemplate the many “what-ifs” that we could be facing. When I was younger I worried or angsted over issues that today with more life experience seem trivial. I can remember studying for tests in school and worrying that I might not pass them or recall what I had learned. And even though I generally did well on exams, I continued to worry about the results.
In more personal realms, I worried about how I looked, was I dressed appropriately for events, would I know how to mix and mingle in social settings. We all have such a strong and not necessarily well understood or articulated drive to belong, so I am not surprised that so much of my sense of vulnerability at a younger age had to do with whether or not I would fit in.
I can still feel unsettled or concerned about key relationships in my life. My focus has shifted from the need to belong to a need to feel connected to others. Like most of us, I have experienced the phenomenon of change in every aspect of my life. And yet even though intellectually I realize at times that everything changes, I miss connecting that concept with all aspects of my life.
I’ve lost people I dearly loved as they have moved away or even more permanently to death. I have lost friends and partners as one or both of us have continued to evolve in our lives and we were no longer able to sustain a close connection. I have lost pets that were central to my life; they were loving, faithful, and brought much joy to my life.
Many years ago, I remember reading a lengthy piece of fiction that followed the eventual deterioration of a married couple, with the wife faring better on health-related issues than her husband. One of the lines that jumped out and me and that has stayed with me went something like this: As we age, conversations begin to morph into monologues. The statement stayed with me as it signaled that if we outlive our friends and partners, we will have fewer people to share our lives with.
What the fictional story left out is that while it is true that we are likely to lose some of those who we feel strongly connected to as we age, there are things we can do to help us prepare for this potential eventuality in our lives.
As we age, we may begin to experience or anticipate new kinds of vulnerabilities. We may become ill or less physically able and may require some assistance to manage our daily lives for a short or extended period of time. We may worry about how we will face an extended illness. How will be manage the process of dying?
Hopefully, I have at least another ten good years left to my life. At this stage of my life, I am not fixating on my own death. I know that death is inevitable, and that knowledge is prompting me to reflect carefully on how I want to use my time. In my previous Blog I wrote about learning to say NO to demands on my time that I didn’t feel fit in with what I have identified as my many directions or themes in my life.
Our imaginations about facing the unknown can probably take us to darker spaces than the actual experience of our lives unfolding. If what I am writing about here overlaps in some ways with my readers’ experiences, I can offer you a resource that I am finding is helpful to me in preparing for the later stages of life.
David Whyte has produced a series of six CDs titled What to Remember When Waking. The series is produced by Sounds True and can either be purchased or accessed by audible credits from Amazon or in my case, I was able to access it from my local library.
Whyte stresses that we need to think about the necessity of “apprenticing” ourselves to the experience of aging. I didn’t understand the significance of his use of that word the first few times I heard him use it, but it gradually sunk in. It is helpful to accept that we can’t know it all, and that we can turn to others to help find our way through this unknown passage.
I loved Whyte’s directive to begin to reflect on “all of the invisible help we have had throughout our lives.” I include in his use of the term “invisible” all of the people who I haven’t known who have been helpful to me in some way along this journey called life. To deepen my awareness of this process of claiming and naming instances of help in my life, I try once a day to recall a situation in which someone provided me with assistance.
I have no idea how I won a scholarship to an all-girls Academy that allowed me to complete four-years of high school in an academically challenging yet extremely caring environment that was led by Ursuline nuns. That experience helped me recognize that I was capable of learning, leading, and thinking for myself. It helped me develop a love of learning that has stayed with me throughout my life.
In college, two of my math professors – I was a math major — looked after me in ways that I only came to appreciate later. One of them suggested that I apply for the student work-study position in the office that he led as part of his responsibility at the University. This part-time job provided me with a small setting that felt like home base. He and those who worked in his office took an interest in me and encouraged me in my undertakings.
Another professor noticed that I was dating a guy in the same class. He picked up on a comment that the young man in the relationship was not pleased that I scored better on exams than he did. My professor asked me stay after class one day and point blank told me that love relationships did not require that I short-change myself in order to make another person happy.
It is worth the effort to think of all of the ways in which others’ goodness and generosity bless those beyond themselves with hands of support. While It may feel like we’re alone at times, we are all held in some way by the goodness of others.
One of the other necessary steps that Whyte discusses is that we have to let go of our “imagined perfect selves” so that we can give ourselves permission to be what we were meant to be in this world. With effort and guidance, we can prepare and surround ourselves with the resources and courage to apprentice ourselves to the Unknown, enabling us to reap the most precious of gifts associated with this stage of our lives.
