I recently came across this amazing TED Talk (also below) with Brené Brown, an American social scientist who took to the painstaking task of studying vulnerability in human emotions; specifically, what separates people who are able to love wholeheartedly from those who claim they cannot. Her study was brave in that it became a personal exploration that she was able to then relate to big picture issues facing the world around her.
What Brown discovers is that those who have more confidence and are more open to loving relationships also make themselves very vulnerable in life, as in, they take on more risks. She also observed that people in America numb themselves to vulnerability, and this can be evidenced by the fact that we are "The most in debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history."
What do her findings mean for society at large? I'm not entirely sure, but I think the notion that we as a people need to confront vulnerability and embrace it can be a powerful goal, to start.
