The Difference Between Vulnerability and Transparency
Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.
– Brené Brown, Daring Greatly
It is possible to know a lot about someone without really knowing them. It is possible to share information about yourself with someone without really growing in connection with them. On the one hand, there are information and facts: that is transparency. On the other hand, there is connection, and community, and growing together: that involves vulnerability. No matter how open or detailed the information is, the two are not the same. Transparency can often masquerade as vulnerability: you can feel like you’re sharing a lot, but not be doing it in a way that leads to true community and growth, so understanding the difference is important.
Transparency is disclosure. It simply refers to how much information you share. By definition, transparency means the ability to see through something—it’s like allowing someone to see through the windows of your house. Maybe you’re a little transparent, letting them see just a little bit, or maybe you’re very transparent, allowing them to see a lot. Either way, you retain control. You can still stuff all the uglier things into a closet. You still decide how to arrange things on the coffee table or how much to tidy up first. You allow someone to see inside your life, but typically in a processed, polished way.
Vulnerability, on the other hand, means inviting them in. Not just letting someone look into your house, but inviting them to step in over the threshold. If you look up the definition of the word in a dictionary, it’s almost always given in negative terms: the state of being exposed to attack, or capable of being physically or emotionally wounded. That is so for a reason: vulnerability is laying yourself open to risk. It is giving up control. You’re saying, come in and help me sort through this mess, come in and see what it’s really like, I need help, or I want you to know, or I’m open to your thoughts. I don’t just want you to know what’s going on, but how it’s affecting me, what it feels like. When you do this, you open yourself to rejection. You make yourself susceptible to the judgment of others. It’s scary. The thing that most holds us back from vulnerability is fear, and the thing that being vulnerable most feels like is courage.
Why in the world would we invite someone to walk into our house like that? Because it’s the only way to have the kind of true connection that we all need and want. We need people to give us new perspectives on our lives. We need people to help us change. We need people to understand ourselves better, to grow in the right ways, to work through our emotions, to allow us to feel safe with, and the list goes on—and we need to learn how to do all of that for someone else. None of that can happen with someone looking in through the windows: they have to come inside. There is no emotional connection, no community, no common purpose, no true growth, without vulnerability.
Vulnerability is something we can choose. We can be deliberate about considering how, and when, and with whom to be vulnerable. We can learn to recognize when someone else is being vulnerable, appreciate their courage, listen well and tread gently. We can ask questions that prompt vulnerability: what do I most fear? what do I most desire? what am I really feeling? what is it I’m struggling with? We can press into opportunities to be vulnerable as they arise. We can work on building a history and atmosphere of trust.
In the end, it is the work of Jesus that allows us to be vulnerable. I’ve often thought: God could have just handed us his Word in the form of a book (or back then, a bag of scrolls). Instead, he sent a person: a person who was tired, and angry, and naked, and anguished, and altogether unpolished in ways that were obvious enough for observers to write them down for us to read about today. God came in vulnerability because he wanted connection with us. And it is because we know we are loved like that by him that we can have the courage to be honest with ourselves and vulnerable with others.
