You are Not Weak

You are Not Weak

Even the hard coconut can break in one blow. It doesn't mean it's weak. It's vulnerable.

Should you be strong all the time? Is it possible? Be Strong — it's an expression we all have heard countless times. Since childhood. As a child when you fall down and people don't want to see you cry, they tell you to be strong. As an adult, anything untoward happens, they don't want you to cry, they tell you to be strong. A caring person will understand your plight and induce strength in you with their empathy. A weak person will convince you that you are being a coward by not being strong, a weak person cannot have empathy, the weak one wants you to ignore your challenges, they want you to hide your fears and concerns. Why? Because somewhere they are scared themselves, they are afraid that seeing you like this may make them weaker, it may expose their own emotional mess.

While I don't deny that a certain degree of strength is needed to survive the blows life can deliver sometimes, at the same time I believe strength does not come from hiding who we are and what we are feeling. That will only be an illusion of strength. Real strength comes from being honest to yourself, it comes from acceptance and understanding.

Let me share with you a real-life story out of Brené Brown's I Thought It Was Just Me:

The author's mother's only sibling was killed in a violent shooting. Her grandmother couldn't endure the death of her son. Quoting verbatim: "Having been an alcoholic most of her life, my grandmother didn't have the emotional resources she needed to survive a traumatic loss like this. For weeks she roamed her neighbourhood, randomly asking the same people over and over if they had heard about his death.

One day, right after my uncle’s memorial service, my mom totally broke down. I had seen her cry once or twice, but I certainly had never seen her cry uncontrollably. My sisters and I were afraid and crying mostly because we were so scared to see her like that. I finally told her that we didn’t know what to do because we had never seen her 'so weak.' She looked at us and said, in a loving yet forceful voice, 'I’m not weak. I’m stronger than you can imagine. I’m just very vulnerable right now. If I were weak, I’d be dead.'"

Om Namah Shivay