I am keenly aware of my human vulnerability. As a result, I am sensitive to the dangers present in everyday living– risks are unpredictable and do not discriminate. There are too many to enumerate: you can get into a car accident when driving, you could lose your job, you could get diagnosed with a terminal illness. There’s no to way predict these things will happen – but we know they could.
It might sound pessimistic but, the way I see it, we are all just one misstep from calamity. Disaster can strike any minute. The space between “everything’s ok” and “my world is falling apart” is not that deep or wide. It only takes one event to send our lives into a downward spiral.
My heightened sensitivity could be a result of my lived experiences – which in recent years have involved significant traumatic events. In a period of five years, I experienced a natural disaster, became the target of physical threats and aggression, was indicted three times by the United States government, and went to prison. These experiences revealed the reality of my human condition; the vulnerability that characterizes my existence.
The Myth of Being in Control
American society grounded is in individualism. Mainstream messages reinforce the idea that the individual controls what happens in life. If we do and say certain things, follow certain rules, and associate with certain people, we can minimize our human vulnerabilities. What’s more, if we do those things we can increase our chances of achieving success. In my experience, that’s not always how life unfolds.
For most of my adult life, I allowed myself to believe that I could control my destiny. If I worked hard, I would succeed. If I was successful at work, I would gain financial independence. If I managed my assets well, I will be able to retire comfortably. If I maintain a healthy lifestyle, I can live a long life. There are some aspects of thinking that are adaptive and helpful. Autonomy, self-determination and an internal locus of control are all associated with greater personal and professional success.
But they don’t work in all situations. After I was indicted for the first time, I lost my professional standing, my ability to be gainfully employed, and the respect of many whom I considered to be friends and colleagues. These losses created practical, social, and emotional challenges for me. Everything that happened was beyond my control. There was nothing I could do to prevent what happened. There was nothing I could do to mitigate the negative effects of the events. At the time, it was extraordinarily difficult to process what was happening.
Developing Greater Sympathy and Empathy for Others
My criminal indictments destroyed the sense of certainty and predictability that had, up to that point, characterized my life. There was nothing I, or anyone else, could do to correct the situation. Living through these difficult experiences helped me understand my human vulnerability. I came to understand the difference between what is and is not under my control. More importantly, I learned how to be grateful that things were not worse.
If it were not for the support of my parents, my legal troubles would have left me homeless. After selling my home in 2019, I would have had nowhere to live. When I was released from prison in 2022, having nowhere to go, I would have been declared homeless. What these experiences helped me understand is just how delicate my existence is.
What happened to me could happen to anyone. If you are reading this and thinking, “that would never happen to me” or “if you were sent to prison, you must have done something”, I’d ask you to consider these statistics. The average driver gets into a car accident once every 17 years. One out of every 100 Americans is likely to be incarcerated. In 2021, nearly 43,000 people died in car crashes and 600,000 individuals entered prison. Those statistics suggest that it most certainly could happen to any of us.
The 600,000 individuals experiencing homelessness across American, some through no fault of their own, simply don’t have a place to live. The causes of homelessness include lack of affordable housing, poverty, domestic violence, mental illness, substance abuse, and insufficient access to health services. Incarceration also leads to homelessness. The formerly incarcerated are 10 times more likely to be homeless. COVID 19 added thousands to the homeless population, many of whom never anticipated the economic hardship the global shutdown would bring. Even if you disagree with my “this could happen to anyone”, these statistics are sobering.
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic transitions to an endemic, recent reports indicate the homeless situation is getting worse in major cities around the U.S. While I am not currently homeless, I accept that I quite easily could be. That leads me to be concerned about the problem of homelessness and society’s response to it. Homelessness is a problem I am concerned about, even if it does not affect me directly. It could.
And that goes for every other precarious situation or debilitating social condition that could befall my life. In accepting my human vulnerability, I have developed greater sympathy and empathy for others who are facing circumstances that threaten their existence.
A common response to homeless encampments is police raids. Not only do raids do little to address the root causes of homelessness, they further exacerbate conditions that compromise individuals’ wellbeing. Police raids can trigger a temporary placement of the homeless in prisons and jails – an environment that is demonstrably more toxic and more dangerous than the streets.
Fortunately, organizations like Seattle-based organization, Co-Lead, are advancing responses to homelessness they recognize our shared human vulnerabilities and honor human dignity. Their example shows it’s not only possible, but imperative, to frame issues of public safety in ways that honor the human dignity of all impacted parties. Adopting social impact strategies that recognize our inherent human vulnerabilities represents a tremendous opportunity to create permanent solutions to society issues that place human beings at risk.
Control What You Can
Try as we might, human beings can’t control what happens in life. What we can control is how we respond to life’s events. These ideas date back as far as 300 BCE when the Stoics wrote volumes about the importance of understanding the difference between what we can and can’t control.
Epictetus is famous for asserting that humans cannot control their bodies, what happens to us, or how what others say or do affect us. Starting from this premise, we are forced to accept that things we probably won’t enjoy will happen to us, and there’s nothing we can do about it. If that’s true; why worry? You can’t control external events.
Marcus Aurelius encouraged his contemporaries to “choose not to be harmed”. Following this logic, what happens to me is less important than how I feel about what happens to me. If we combine Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius’ teachings we wind up with something like this: Everything that happens is beyond my control and, no matter what happens, I do not need to feel harmed by it.
While serving six months in federal prison, I read The Practicing Stoic. The book was a gift from a kind and empathetic person who I did not know well at the time. To this day, I remain grateful for his thoughtfulness in gifting me the book. What I learned about Stoicism has helped me survive many difficult moments. And it guides me today as I seek to understand my purpose in life.
One of my favorite quotes from that book is: “A man goes to prison. That he fares badly, that man adds on his own.” I spent a lot of time contemplating how that quote applied to my circumstances. As a result, three things became clear to me. One: I went to prison. Two: There’s nothing that needs to follow that statement of fact. Three: how I feel about going to prison is something that is entirely left to me to determine.
Of course, going to prison is painful. Apart from the barbaric conditions that characterize America’s prisons, I lost my family, my assets, my freedom, my independence and access to medical care. This reality created physical, financial, social, and emotional challenges for me. But how I chose to feel about those challenges was, and continues to be, entirely up to me.
Coming to Terms with My Vulnerability
I don’t know anyone who likes experiences that are painful or destructive. No one wants to get in a car accident, lose their job, or get sick. I’m pretty sure no one wants to go to prison. But if any of these things happen to you, how you feel about them is entirely up to you. Life’s events are beyond our control and, while we might have wished something didn’t happen, we need not feel devastated by the fact that it did.
Accepting what happens in life – and refraining from adding on negative statements about what those events mean – is freeing. It creates an opportunity for us to accept our human vulnerability. When we recognize what makes us vulnerable, we can see those same vulnerabilities in our fellow human beings. When we can see another person through the same lens that we see ourselves, we are apt to treat them with greater sympathy and empathy because we recognize our shared human condition.
Every day I seek to better understand and accept the vulnerabilities that characterize our collective human existence. I sympathize and empathize with other human beings who are suffering because of their human vulnerabilities. I oppose social policies that violate basic human rights and denigrate human dignity. I hope my efforts enable me to be a source of comfort to others experiencing difficulty so that they, too, can choose to not be harmed by their circumstance.
Yes, I know the things that happen in life are beyond my control. Coming to terms with my own vulnerability allows me to turn my attention more fully to the numerous social injustices that threaten our collective humanity. My vulnerability does not make me weak; it is my source of strength.