The Strong Are Vulnerable

Love is vulnerability, but it’s also the fire in your veins allowing you to sacrifice and to live passionately and courageously on purpose. Love that would make us weak with vulnerability also makes us strong and invulnerable. It’s a paradox, but it’s true. When we refuse vulnerability and the path of love, we build walls for protection that become a coffin and a slow joyless path toward death. When we fight for what we love we are fearless.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about love and strength. Vulnerability and the need to be tough, immovable. On the surface they seem at odds. As warriors, we’re either strong or we’re not. We’re either vulnerable or a cold, hard fortress wall.

But we’re not machines. We’re not soulless battle axes to slice where we’re pointed without regard for why we’re fighting. We train, fight, and defend, but not as mercenaries. There’s purpose and meaning behind the terrifying mask that the bad guys see when they face us. That purpose and meaning is called love.

Love is vulnerability, but it’s also the fire in your veins allowing you to sacrifice and to live passionately and courageously on purpose. Love that would make us weak with vulnerability also makes us strong and invulnerable. It’s a paradox, but it’s true. When we refuse vulnerability and the path of love, we build walls for protection that become a coffin and a slow joyless path toward death.

When we fight for what we love we have moments of fearlessness, because love casts out all fear. When you love something beyond yourself, you’re willing to push yourself to the limit in the pursuit or preservation of what you love.

Warriors with Broken Hearts

Why is there this tendency for the warrior types to also become closed off to emotion? Perhaps we should just ask why there’s a tendency for men to shut off emotion because we want to be strong, or at least appear strong.

I understand this. I feel that pressure on me to be self-sufficient. An immovable mountain of a man who’s unphased by difficulty and suffering. And for those of us who’ve had our hearts broken, and maybe that’s you—by a parent, a friend, a spouse, a girlfriend, or some kind of trauma that happened to you in combat or elsewhere—you have a tendency to wall yourself off from emotional connection and vulnerability. You put on a John Wayne persona. If you can’t feel pain, they can’t hurt you.

This is a hollow notion of strength. It turns people into stoic robots. I want to caution people against that. Self-protection isn’t the purpose of the warrior life. We are fighting for something. And I believe that “something” is love. There’s unspeakable joy that comes through loving other people and being loved in return.

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If you don’t feel worthy of love, you’re believing a lie. If you’re afraid of the vulnerability of love, that’s a lie, too. It’s better to have loved and lost than to never love at all.

And for soldiers or police or anyone who's a part of the “warrior class,” that what we run on. Warrior poets do what we do to protect life and defend what we care about. If we don’t care, we’re mercenaries.

Are We Cowards in Our Supposed Strength?

Consider this with me. When we disconnect from emotions, vulnerability, love, kindness, human connection, we are running away even if we appear like immovable mountains. We’re behaving like the hurt child. We’re behaving a bit like the cowards we might otherwise despise.

And there’s a fine line here.

Moderating emotions and words is a sign of discipline and self control. Appearing strong for others is what we’re supposed to do to embolden and strengthen those around us in the face of adversity.

But this stolid outward appearance is in the service of something greater than personal comfort and safety. The Bible says we’re supposed to guard our hearts, yes. But why? Because it is a well spring. It is a source of life in otherwise arid lands.

And you don’t guard your heart to avoid getting hurt. You guard your heart from contaminating influences so that you and those around you can experience goodness and beauty and abundant life.

You are guarding the well so that you can use it to provide life to those you love. It’s not so we can avoid pain. And I don’t want to downplay the profound suffering that people have faced in childhood, in relationships, in war. It’s important to understand and acknowledge and face that pain head on in an honest way. But don’t let that pain cause you to deny others in your life the connection that they need from you--and that you need from them.

In the midst of trying to become so macho and strong in the eyes of the world, we might miss out on the stuff that's right in front of us. The important stuff.

Woe be to us if we would fail our family and our friends and those people around us who count on us, who want access to our lives. If we deny them that right, we’re behaving weakly.

Train Hard. Train Smart. Live Free.