Vulnerable Strength

I believe in living life to the fullest, and not just the saying it—the actually doing it. I believe in coffee strong enough to wake you from a dead sleep. I believe in genuine laughter and crying and all the sorts of emotions we’re all afraid to let out but do anyway when the cracks break us open. My father was the strong man in our family circus. He bustled through the work week barely breaking a sweat and when trial and tribulation hit our tent, he held us together and kept the flaps down.

               I’ve never seen him cry. Not once in my almost-30 years. Not when his father passed, not when good friends passed, not when tragedy struck our lives constantly. Never. My father never cracks. His soft emotions remain somewhere tucked away inside his worn and marred exterior. I suspect that the kidney stones he passed last June were actually bits of emotions he swore to never show. But they build up, as things do, so perhaps his body needed to expel the excess somehow.

               I believe that without experiencing every emotion, at least once, we cannot be living life to its fullest. I believe my father has some of the best tales I’ve ever heard, but they are told like storytellers of the past bent on furthering the history of the culture: with performance in mind. My father is strong, kind, passionate about passions, loving, fun. Those are undoubtedly qualities he possesses. He is not open, or “sensitive”, or weak by most definitions of the word.

I have learned, by being a father myself, that sometimes in our weakest moments, we show our strength. It is with contrast that we see the picture most clearly; it is in the dark that we most appreciate the light (except maybe on Monday mornings).

I believe in living life to the fullest, by experiencing as much as I can with every emotion that we as people possess. I believe in living life colorfully and that in vulnerable moments, there is a strength like no other.