Strength and weakness
Teaching a mindfulness course this week I read the poem “Adrift” by Mark Nepo.
In it, he highlights the way seemingly different qualities form part of a greater whole. Qualities like sadness and beauty, wonder and grief.
This got me thinking about strength and weakness.
I like thinking of meditation as something you do to build your inner strengths. Strengths like steadiness, clarity and compassion. These strengths come from capacities we already have. So in one sense, we have what we need. And with our strength, we can help each other.
At the same time, we are all weak. We all have frailties, wounds and limits. And we all have the potential to get hurt, a vulnerability at the centre of our lives. We all need help.
It’s easy to fixate on one or the other of these.
Focusing on our own strengths, we idealise our potential for growth. Doing so loses touch with our complexity, denying space to the parts of ourselves that hurt and need help.
Focusing on the strengths of others, we see ourselves as insufficient in comparison. The biased filters of modern media no doubt turbocharge this process.
Focusing on our weakness, we deny our capacities for brilliance, genius and inspiration. If we lose our footing and start to drown in our weakness we forget our potential for growth.
Focusing on the weakness of others does them a disservice, framing them as deficient. In this, we deny them their potential for being more.
As Mark Nepo points to, can we honour strength and weakness together? In ourselves and in others?
That’s one of the things I love about mindfulness and meditation. Making the time and space to look at what’s happening right in front of us. To see it all (as much as that is possible) and to hold it all in a wider perspective.