Humility, Attention,
and “Vulnerability Hangovers”
Humility
I am consistently reminded of the necessity for certain ideas and experiences to be expounded upon through constraint. At times, the form in which an idea is presented, is not slow,2 small and /or rigorous enough for its beauty to surface through the medium. Sometimes the use of a metaphor falls short, because not enough time, space, and attention to difference is allowed through the medium.
As an emergent storyteller, I absolutely struggle with this understanding, because, instead of reining in my imagination, I sometimes experience it as having to fight against relatability and inclusion. (And I would rather not be included, because there is no choice, and therefore no generosity in inclusion.)
Attention
However, in spite of my ongoing not-so-inner conflicts, attention waits for no woman. It is always circling and searching—demanding a measured sacredness. And so, fascination and disturbance must bubble to the surface in every event that the slow choking out of a spark of attention ensues when the element of competition creeps into a potential friendship. With it, specifically, the tension in understanding that learning accompanies that spark’s quiet descension back into the night.
As a friend once told me, “If it’s there, it’s there. If it’s not, it’s not.” Because in the end life is life, energy has to be preserved; it’s business as usual; people have lives and everyone has to eat.. You do you, …and it’s Not. That. Deep.
But this is not how relationality works. As with a harmoniously arranged sentence with carefully chosen words, capital letters, and full stops, its sentence wants to be meaningfully and intentionally interpreted. When attention is divested away from a type of mutual responsivity, the relational suffers and dysfunction sets in. Iain McGilChrist, Brené Brown, David Brooks, and many others expand on this concept.
“Vulnerability Hangovers”
Brené Brown recently coined the term “vulnerability hangover”, which I do not have explicit clarity on, but can imagine what it may feel like.
Nevertheless, in the social media zeitgeist, for example, there is this underlying notion, that using capital letters and full stops in texts is a form of exercising passive aggressiveness. This is, in my interpretation, the cultural embodiment of a vulnerability hangover. In essence, what this represents is a state of being high-strung in the cycle of disappointment with our interactions, removing ancient forms that are supposed to provide rigor to our interactions.
Iain McGilChrist (2009) refers to this removal of ancient forms such as time, context, tradition, the body and embodied existence, as a way to subdue or suppress difference. The sacredness of how we focus our attention therefore loses its meaning. Vision is divided in high frequencies, and relationships and the relational break down. McGilChrist states that “the impulse towards harmony gives way to the impulse towards singleness and purity.”3
My concern is not only for our attention, but more toward the outflow of our intentions.
In conclusion, as a not-so-securely attached middle child, I love the security of capital letters and full stops. But I also love boundless interactions that can read between my lines; not threatened by colour, shadows and relational dependency. McGilChrist distils this idea into a taking part in ‘evoking responsivity’3—where I can envision what it means when ‘deep calls unto deep’. Attention yields to attention, searching and circling for its origin or counterpart.
The question is therefore not, “God, what is wrong with people?”, and by default what is wrong with me, but “How am I stewarding the sacredness of my attention in this moment?”.
References
2. Alida Vermeulen.
3. McGilChrist, I. 2009. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (New Expanded Edition). Yale University Press.
Dorota Semla, pexels.com.