Quotes About Vulnerability

I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.

he said it was interesting. He used the word 'textured'. He said 'smooth' is boring but 'textured' was interesting, and the scar meant that I was stronger than whatever had tried to hurt me.

Psychosis can happen out of the blue, to anyone, and no one knows why. Not even the best doctors on the planet. And that's why Mom is always so afraid. If we don't know what made me sick in the first place, how can anyone guarantee I won't flip out again?

I'm talking to you in bed at one in the morning. How mad can I be?" I picture him there, in what, flannel pajamas? Underwear? Nothing at all?

It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it.

As psychologist Herb Goldberg reminds us in his book The Hazards of Being Male, 'The male has paid a heavy price for his masculine "privilege" and power.... He is out of touch with his emotions and his body. He is playing by the rules of the male game plan and with lemming-like purpose he is destroying himself--emotionally, psychologically, and physically.

Men have a higher death rate than women for nine out of ten leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, injuries, cerebrovascular disease, chronic lower respiratory disease, diabetes, pneumonia and flu, HIV infection, suicide, and homicide. We all die of something, but if you're a guy, you are more likely to get a serious disease and die from it than are women.

Many of us have been burned by love and vowed to keep ourselves safe and not get pulled in again. But, inevitably, we do. Then we vow that this time, it's going to be different. This time, we're not going to make the same mistakes. And things seem wonderful--for a while. But more often than not, the same problems come up over and over.

Anger is the only emotion many men allow themselves to express. Growing up, we are taught to avoid anything that is seen as the least bit feminine. We are taught that men 'do' while women 'feel.' We learn to keep all emotions under wraps, to see them as unmanly. We cannot show we are hurt, afraid, worried, or panicked. The feeling we are allowed to express without being called feminine is anger. When men experience IMS, anger is often the primary emotion.

A woman is at her greatest peril in the presence of a beautiful man.

I'd spent five minutes looking at Twitter once and felt I'd wandered into a poker game where everyone immediately displayed their hands against the cool green of the felt.

I don't need this, I was thinking. But I'm weak. I'll be the first to admit it. If a chick presses her face against mine, all soft perfume and whispers, what am I going to do? Say no?

I'd spent five minutes looking at Twitter once and felt I'd wandered into a poker game where everyone immediately displayed their hands against the cool green of the felt.

As Woods lay unconscious on the road at 2:25 a.m. on November 27, 2009, blood on his teeth and lips, he finally appeared as he truly was-a vulnerable, fragile, deeply wounded person.

I am not the kind of person women fall in love with. I sort of grow on them, like a fungus. I need to either work alongside somebody or take a series of classes with her -- you know, get to know her over a period of time to let her see that my goofiness is actually an attribute, not a fatal flaw.

Most cynics are really crushed romantics: they've been hurt, they're sensitive, and their cynicism is a shell that's protecting this tiny, dear part in them that's still alive.

I want to be ripped apart by music. I want it to be something that feeds and replenishes, or that totally sucks the life out of you. I want to be dashed against the rocks.

I surrendered who I was to who you are..

Racism is not merely about individual chauvinism, prejudice, or bigotry. Ruth Glimore reminds us that it is about the ways different groups are 'vulnerable to premature death,' whether at the hands of the state or structures that kill.

Let life kick you off your pedestal time and time again, until you lose all interest in being on pedestals.

Stop trying to heal yourself, fix yourself, even awaken yourself. Let go of letting go. Stop trying to fast-forward the movie of your life, chasing futures that never seem to arrive. Instead, bow deeply to yourself as you actually are. Your pain, your sorrow, your doubts, your deepest longing, your fearful thoughts...are not mistakes, and they aren't asking to be healing. They are asking to be held. Here, now, lightly, in the loving arms of present awareness.

And how easy this mechanism is to see in others! Can we see it in ourselves? That is the question. Who are your scapegoats? What do you reject in others that you secretly reject in yourself? Weakness? Failure? Fear? Homosexuality? Violence? What thoughts and feelings do you not admit in yourself, in order to hold up to the world an image of who you are?

Globally, about 145 million people live three feet or less above the current sea level. As the waters rise, millions of these people will be displaced, many of them in poor countries, creating generations of climate refugees that will make today's Syrian war refugee crisis look like a high school drama production.

Lower Manhattan is the most valuable chunk of real estate on the planet, as well as the economic engine for the entire region—if it can't be protected, then New York City is in deep trouble.