Weakness vs Vulnerability — the tangible difference

An investigative glance into why these two things are not the same.

There’s been a lot of talk about vulnerability in the last decade. The taboo of showing your feelings has become more acceptable in societal interactions. But a resounding lack of understanding exists. I myself question the usefulness of billions of people spouting out about their life.

Why do some wear vulnerability so well while others just look pitiful?

This is an investigative piece that is an excerpt from a larger body of work. I hope you find the research as helpful as I have.

Let’s start with the meanings before drawing comparisons.

Weakness [weak] as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is the following;

a: mentally or intellectually deficient;

b: not firmly decided : vacillating;

c: resulting from or indicating lack of judgement or discernment;

d: not able to withstand temptation or persuasion.

The history (or etymology) for the word weak is as follows. Middle English weike, from Old Norse veikr: akin to Old English wican to yield, Greek eikein to give way, Sanskrit vijate he speeds, flees.

Weakness is often thought as a fault in someone’s character.

Vulnerability [vulnerable], defined from the same source is;

a: capable of being physically or emotionally wounded;

b: open to attack or damage.

The history of the word derived from the Latin noun vulnus (“wound”). “Vulnus” led to the Latin verb vulnerare, meaning “to wound,” and then to the Late Latin adjective vulnerabilis, which became “vulnerable” in English in the early 1600s.

The Cambridge thesaurus lists “weak” as a synonym to vulnerable. Similar words do not have the same meaning.

Now let’s investigate the subtle differences.

When considering these definitions, we uncover some key differences. Weakness is the act of running away as opposed to staying and fighting. Vulnerability is the thing that hurts you and has nothing to do with the action that follows. Vulnerable is touching a hot stove, weakness is never going near a stove again.

People love a good story of fighting the good fight. Nobody wants to finish a book that ends with the protagonist retreating. It’s not attractive or admirable. After all, it’s a common belief that we mirror the qualities we love in others. We also are attracted to those that have those qualities.

The problem with vulnerability is it creates uncertainty. Many times we just don’t know how to deal with that.

Vulnerability is showing our humanity. If I touch a hot stove with a bare hand, it will burn my hand. Human skin cannot withstand that temperature. We create a phycological story of what that experience taught us and let it stand in the way of our own success. Weakness has a lot of baggage — creating stories and uncertainty. These stories keep us away from unlocking the truth of our own ability. We never see it because we fail to investigate further. Our weakness is the stories we tell ourselves — that hold us back from doing what we trulylove. Weakness kills creativity.

Vulnerability is the test that validates our path. To investigate our path, we need to know the pitfalls ahead of us. Consider vulnerability as a tool to achieve true enlightenment. We have to identify vulnerabilities to solve a dilemma. Think about any goal you want to achieve — it’s about transforming yourself to a different place. That journey will most certainly be wrought with setbacks. Identifying these things that hurt us along the way will help us persevere. It’s important to understand that we are forging a new way and mistakes (that will hurt us) are inevitable. Building a resilience to these setbacks, help us on our journey.

It seems critical to own these vulnerabilities. Consider naming it and contemplate other alternative scenarios. Don’t give into whatever fears you have… that is weakness. We recognize the difference in our human to human contact. The story of retreat is not one we want to hear about and we surely don’t want to talk about it.