Vulnerability in Community

To be vulnerable with someone is a scary thing. To carry secret burdens is a much scarier thing. Trying to determine when and how to be vulnerable requires a little bit of thought. This blog is going to process those thoughts out loud.

I believe that communities must share a location to actually be a community. If a person wants to count the number of communities that they are a part of, they simply need to count the number of locations that they frequent. If you recently moved out of your city, it's very easy to know how many communities you had. Simply count the number of going away parties you had before you left.

My wife and I have two communities currently, but we just added another a couple weeks ago. We started working out at a different church in town multiple days per week. We don't know anybody really, but we love the community already.

That said, I would not say that I'm vulnerable with any of my communities in Kentucky yet. We do have a lot of trust with people in our communities, and we feel very committed, but we don't necessarily share personal things very much. We don't necessarily hear a lot of personal things with other people either. I'm starting to believe that transparency in community is rare.

As a male, I think vulnerability is more challenging for me than for my wife. It seems that she is more comfortable talking with the women around her about more personal things. Perhaps this is a gender thing.

Talking about problems is a downer. It's not really a community building activity. Sharing a meal, telling funny stories, playing games, and watching sports are much safer and easier ways to build community than talking about depression, failures in marriage and parenting, or being angry deep inside. Staying positive is critical to keeping a community together.

Regional differences exist. Colorado had lots of vulnerability, and very little fun. Communities in Colorado share their problems, but have a harder time laughing together. In Kentucky and Alabama, we laugh together a lot, but rarely share personal things. I think maybe my northern friends have the best balance actually. Those mid-western states may be able to teach us all some things about community.

I'm still trying to decide what this all adds up to. I think vulnerability is important for long term health, but I'm also concerned that the wrong kind of vulnerability would just make the community uncomfortable and unhealthy.