If you know me, you know that there is a lot about our culture that I find very backwards and messed up. One of those is how we define strength and weakness. As a society we define strength (emotionally) as being fine, no matter what is going on. “She was so strong, she didn’t even cry”, “He just kept doing what he needed to, you couldn’t even tell that something had happened”, etc. Leading us to believe that weakness is crying, hurting, showing it. What if this doesn’t fit though?
I want you to imagine a body builder for a moment, someone we consider physically strong. Is he(or she) strong because he can lift the weights that I can lift, which is not much, or because he can lift what most people can’t? We would agree that his physical strength is determined by his ability to do the thing that’s harder, that not everyone can do.
Now, is it harder/scarier to smile and pretend you’re fine or to be vulnerable with another human being? Vulnerability takes far more courage and is certainly harder, so how could it possibly be weakness, if strength is the ability to do what’s harder?
I think our culture holds this belief because if we acknowledge that in fact vulnerability is strength, then we would all have to start feeling our feelings and we don’t want to do that. Our culture is based on comfort and we work to stay in that place. Feelings are scary and messy and hard, so we perpetuate this narrative where they equate to weakness so we can stay away from them.
If you want to be strong, be courageous, be fearless…acknowledge the fear, sadness, hurt, etc because that is the harder, more courageous thing to do. It is also how we truly find the peace we crave and the ability to move forward.
Our narrative that says strength is unfeeling ignores that it is part of the human experience to feel. It is what leads to the staggering rates of addiction (especially among men), self harm, and suicide. We can’t just not feel and until we feel our feelings, we will constantly be working to escape and mask them and there is no healthy way to do this. Be brave…this means be vulnerable.