To live, we must be brave. It takes courage to live. What makes us who we are is how brave and courageous we are in the face of hardships and obstacles. In brief, to live means to be strong. After all, that is the most commonly value of our days: the strong survive, the weak perish because of their very weakness. They should have been strong if they wanted to live, if they really were fit to live. Strength – in whichever form, providing it reflects the dominant social norm at the time – is what determines the quality of an individual. Is this not obvious??
No. It is not obvious. It is, in fact, a very challenging and sometimes destructive way of living. It rejects the abnormal, the soft, the odd, the unique, the delicate, the sensitive. It demeans the healing value of a tear, a sob, a de-pression, a break from the hectic chase of elusive rewards. It alienates us from qualities of character by labelling them ‘weakness’, preventing us from seeing their potential beyond the messy exterior of ‘those flaws and wrongs and bads’. If these weak traits and characteristics and behaviours are part of us, it surely is because they have a reason to exist in us. Feeling weak is not a weakness. It is a different way of relating to life in a given time, at a given moment. And so be it.
Life makes us ‘imperfect’, with a potential for strength and a potential for weakness. We would never appreciate how strong we can be or have proven ourselves to be (or how strong we have surprised ourselves to be) if we had never encountered a great sense of weakness in us. This means that if we embrace the experience of weakness, we make room for this energy to exist, and we can consciously develop a relationship with it. There is much energy in moments of weakness: it is just that this energy is not one that springs out with a ‘BANG!’ or that holds firmly onto something like a marble statue. It is an energy of a different kind: an energy of deep need, of softness underneath which raw emotions rage, of despair and hope entangled. It is an energy that teaches the need to rest, because life cannot be sustained without pauses. It is an energy that teaches us where we are at in ourselves: we see the traces of the steps taken forward, we see the traces of the steps taken backwards; we notice what happens when we stand still, unable or unwilling to move because it seems impossible at this moment to move. And in this moment, as always, there is a choice we are invited to make: what now?
We should beware of answering this question too quickly. Staying with the experience of weakness can be insightful, in so far as it can reveal cues about what calls for attention in our deep dark psyche. In many ways, the experience of weakness – physical, emotional, moral – is a manifestation of a wounded inner child desperate for care and attention. The inner child is a wonderful archetype, the trigger for new paths and new lives. It is also very self-centred, and yet at once very vulnerable. What to an adult ego seems just an anecdotal story can be a deep wound to an inner child. And although the child has to learn to use and grow its own resources (dare we say, to ‘toughen up’?), it also needs the love, support and guidance of parents and companions to make it through and relate to the Self. Behind weakness, we usually find fear; behind that fear, we usually find a lack of care, of love, of grounding. That is what needs to be fixed, not the weakness itself. When we understand what our weakness reflects, what energy it carries and what parts of us crave for nurturance, then we live fully as we are.
This reflection occurs in the depths of the psyche. At a conscious level, we often see the situation in a more black-and-white manner: I do not like being weak (judgment), I should not be weak because…(judgment); or I somehow find that by being weak I protect myself from…(projection and judgment). If we can withhold judgment just for a while, to allow the experience of weakness to rise to the surface, to come ashore, to be fully present – then we are in a position to see, feel, explore, understand, relate with and channel the potential that weakness gifts us with.
This is not an ode to weakness as an excuse for misbehaviour, especially when projected outwardly towards others who become shadow-bearers. This is an invitation to see in our moments of weakness a deep call for life from a part of us, buried deep down, who never quite had the chance to be nurtured as it needed. Now is the chance to do so. Now is the chance to heal.
What would happen if you were to consider your weakness as a learning experience? What if, instead of trying to fight them or allow them to take over all conscious control, you were to pause and observe, to notice and relate?
Bring to mind a moment of weakness that you have experience in the past – it will of course be something YOU consider an evidence of weakness, even if others do not see it as such. Stay with the feeling, the sensations, the emotions. Explore the experience as it comes. Observe the mind’s chatter, its reactions, its censoring perhaps. Now, bring your awareness to your heart and solar plexus, and imagine your inner child. Bring the inner child into the experience of weakness: what comes up? What happens in the body, what images may form? Stay with it, make room for it to be there, observe any changes as you do nothing but observe and let be. Now ask yourself: what is it that I truly need? What is it that I feel I missed out on? And let your inner child respond – here lies your task towards yourself.