LIFE DOESNT ASK FOR OUR CONSENT
Human vulnerability is one of our most defining characteristics. We don't often reflect on this and most people try to avoid encountering vulnerability desperately. However, vulnerability and dependency are some of the most predominant parts of our experience. We are born totally helpless and remain dependent on adults for much longer than any other animal. We are incredibly vulnerable while developing, easily influenced, easily hurt. Our childhood is a time of immense psychological importance because of this exquisite vulnerability that has not yet learned to defend.
Even biologically we are totally vulnerable. We possess no scales, thick hide, or natural weapons. We have soft bellies, easily damaged skulls, and a bio-mechanical system as fragile as it is powerful and resilient.
It's almost as if life is trying to tell us that we were made to be vulnerable.
It's almost as if one could say ones nature in this life is one of vulnerability and interrelation with other people.
It's almost ironic how the most emotionally sensitive species I know is also the one that runs the most from pain and discomfort. Even the most hardened people, are only hardened because their intense sensitivity was too much to bear.
Life begs no consent for its ravishing intensity. It invades the boundaries of our individual selves. It shows up unannounced and throws us against the wall as it takes what it wants. We cant control our emotions or thoughts. When the body wants to feel it will feel. Life doesnt ask for our consent.
We are designed to feel. We are designed to be filled with what life brings to us.
We often think we are in control of our actions, but there are daily occurrences of something beyond ourselves invading our personal boundaries and simply acting. Have your parent call you on the phone and you may end up saying things you did not intend to say!
If we are in such control who just spoke those words?
And yet we all also can remember times we simply knew the right words to say that helped another?
Life takes us and fills us with horrible and wonderful things.
We suffer this unbearable intimacy with all its comings and goings, its a wild thing that we cannot control or understand. It lives in us and through us, it penetrates and fills us in every moment. We are closer than close, we are made of its substance. We could not be more vulnerable and sensitive to it.
We think we will be saved by having some level of control over this wild thing, by being able to understand and shrink its vastness into something we can grasp.
We shrink from its titanic immensity.
But our salvation comes through giving our unwavering consent to something which does not ask for it. We must trust something that tells us nothing, promises us nothing, and gives us no certainty.
This may ask like a tremendous price to pay, but we are all already paying it, and suffering for our unwillingness to come to terms with this fact. Life has never asked permission, and never will. The sooner we get on board the better.
Steven
