How Would YOU Define Vulnerability?

Not everyone has the asset that I do in my life: a kid who researches for the sheer fun of it.

That's not me being smug, or feeling superior, or talking about how smart my kid is and implying that I have anything to do with it. In fact, just minutes earlier, Hunter was playing MMMBop, the 1997 Hanson masterpiece, at full volume throughout the house, and eating his crock pot chicken burrito bowl in a way that slopped it all over his own face up to and including his eyelashes, in an attempt to make me wet my pants.

So, I'm far from smug. It's really just about the fact that my kid researches for fun, and teaches me about what he has learned.

He's also deeply intuitive, and can read me like a book. Tonight when we were having our nightly talk about how much the dinner I prepared did or did not suck, he sat me in front of my computer and pulled up a link. He made it full screen. He hit play. He dimmed the freaking LIGHTS. I knew that whatever I was about to watch, it was probably a big deal.

It was.

For those of you who have perhaps seen this, you know what I'm talking about. I went from thinking, okay, do I really have time to watch this? to thinking, oh my gosh, if this isn't a universal issue, I don't know what is.

Because no matter who you are on the outside, no matter what you project, no matter how you conduct your life, somewhere deep inside your very being lies what is part of every human's genetic makeup: vulnerability. You can deny it, you can try to justify your actions with a different color of paint and different line of defense, but the fact remains that we are all vulnerable.

Here is the link, which will take 20 minutes of your time. I'm not asking you to watch it. I'm just saying that if you should choose to watch it, do so with an open mind and no distractions. My phone is completely broken, so I was in an excellent position to devote the attention to the topic.




She had me from the beginning. Dr. Brown is a qualitative researcher, which is my kind of work, but she speaks the language of everyone. She touched me to the core, and I know that I'm not the only one, as this particular talk was in the most popular Ted Talks of all time.

Please do yourself a favor, and check it out.