Why Feeling Vulnerable Is a Good Thing
Tags: Mindfulness, Mental Health, Fitness, Lifestyle, Psychology

Why Feeling Vulnerable Is a Good Thing

We need to strengthen our tolerance for the unknown

Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash

We live in a highly predictable world, but it wasn’t always this way. Our ancestors faced unknowns around every corner, and they did it with grace. If tolerance for uncertainty was a muscle, they used it and built up some impressive bulk. We’ve let that muscle wither and atrophy.

How did we get so soft?

Today we have apps to predict almost everything, weather, traffic, book recommendations, music, you name it, there’s an app for it. Most of us enjoy the comfort of knowing what to expect and when. Then the pandemic hit and boom, we’re left struggling with an intolerance of uncertainty.

“Fear and anxiety many times indicates that we are moving in a positive direction, out of the safe confines of our comfort zone, and in the direction of our true purpose.”

― Charles F. Glassman

I’m writing this smack dab in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. We don’t know when it will end. Although vaccines are on the way, most of us don’t know when we’ll receive one. There is a lot we don’t know and we don’t like it.

Unfamiliar circumstances make us squirm, but I say lean in to it. Feel the burn. It means we’re growing.

And how do we react when faced with the unknown? Well, some of us buy a truckload of toilet paper, of course. That’s one way to feel like we’re a little more in control. We stock up. The danger being that if the shelves are empty, it throws us deeper into despair. I witnessed some ugly behaviour over toilet paper, or the lack of it, at my local grocery store back in March.

What would my great-grandparents have thought of it all? They would shake their heads, I imagine. Splinter free toilet paper didn’t hit the market until 1930, almost 50 years after they were born. Ouch! They had to deal with whatever they could find until then. I hear the Sears catalogue was popular.

And talk about the unknown, my ancestors and maybe yours, were moving to new territory, perhaps even new continents where they had never been before. They were pioneers with only a small inkling of an idea of what life would be like in their new digs. They didn’t have weather apps or google maps to help them find their way.

They faced unknowns regularly and head on. I imagine they felt fully alive doing it.

I don’t suggest we go back to living like our ancestors did, but I think we need to flex our tolerance for unknowns more before we lose the ability entirely.

Be stronger than this challenge, and this challenge strengthens you

Today, when we can’t predict an outcome, we fill in the blanks with worry and anxiety. Not helpful, and sometimes even dangerous.

It makes me wonder if our society's lack of tolerance for unknowns is why we’ve seen such bolstering of white supremacists recently. That, plus Trump.

At its extreme, intolerance for the unknown is a seed for racism. The word xenophobia “derives from two Greek terms: xenos, which can be translated as either “stranger” or “guest,” and phobos, which means either “fear” or “flight.” — Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Let’s call it stranger fear instead, so we really understand what we’re talking about. Xenophobia sounds too pretty a word for the ugly seed that it is. Once planted, it can grow into a belief in superiority like white supremacy. Now that’s something to fear.

Don’t be the same. Be better

Feeling vulnerable without lashing out is better, but still doesn’t feel good. It’s uncomfortable until we get used to it. We can get used to it. We should get used to it.

Wondering if you are intolerant to uncertainty? There is a tool to predict that, too. Of course there is.

There are many articles written about how to deal with our fear of the unknown.