A World in Which Being Vulnerable is the Normality and Not the Exception.

Like many people around the world I too have struggled with letting people into my life on a deeper than face value connection. It always seems so unsafe to let anyone in when everyday on the news you see something going terribly wrong and the response towards it. Nine times out of ten, there is an immediate judgmental response and never an attempt to understand what actually happened. Anne Hallward in her Ted Talk  “How Telling Our Silenced Stories Can Change the World,” says that instead of everyone keeping themselves closed off, we should be as vulnerable around them as possible in order to create conversations that may be difficult at first but eventually turn into something that everyone has a better neutral understanding of. In this statement she is basically asking the world to be able to maybe let down some of the outer barriers that we may have to the world around us in order to help those who need it the most. To support this idea, Hallward also quotes a study in her Ted Talk in which James Pennebaker who did research at the University of Texas says that after telling those stories and letting ourselves be vulnerable with those silent stories, it is actually a healing element for both our physical and mental health. I think Hallward was smart in including this element because it supports what she is claiming with how being vulnerable is helpful to society: it literally is a helping hand to our health. Conclusively speaking, those who hold everything in, including myself, have a difficult time expressing themselves and what may be at the heart of the issues that they face; however, if we learn to let those around us learn from our stories, we can make a huge difference in society.