We live in a world that shames weakness.
This type of world has created a society that isolates itself and cuts itself off from the one thing that can actually make us whole, humans.
This is unfortunate because...
our weaknesses are here to bring us together.
Many of us look at weakness as a bad thing. In a job interview they always ask you, "What are your weaknesses?". Of course you have to answer that question with a weakness that in turn makes you still look strong.
It's sad how much we are in denial that we are actually very weak and fragile creatures.
I had a mindset shift a bit ago.... a new way to look at weakness. I had heard the idea before, when you are weak you are strong, I never really understood it. It didn't make sense until, I found myself at my most weakest point in my life.
A couple years ago, I ran into my weakness head on. It took me out, leveled me, floored me. It was a weakness that had been there my whole life but I denied it. My weakness was that I felt like I could do everything myself and that having people around would only slow me down. I believed in taking care of others but never myself, because I was superior. This false idea lead me to my biggest moment of weakness.
I was exhausted, and at first I just double down, which only made it worse.
Finally I broke. I got help. I told friends I had to change things. I told them I needed help.
In this moment it felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath me. I felt like everything was upside down, spinning, and I literally felt like reality was shifting. It was very alarming. The truth was, reality was shifting. My old view of weakness and the world was breaking.
What I was doing, simply wasn't working anymore.
I finally looked at my weakness, which is honestly, a universal weakness and spun the whole idea.
We need people and our weaknesses, and everything that we view as bad that happens to us is actually here to bring us together.
This idea changed my whole view of life. We are made to be with people. We all have unique abilities and gifts and skills. We are not made to do life alone nor work alone. We have a choice everyday to either engage with others or isolate ourselves. I have done the isolation thing and it creates a living hell.
Anytime I have gotten sick or broken a bone or had a surgery....(I am very accident prone) it has forced me to slow down. It has forced me to depend on others, and in those moments when it seems like I am at my weakest, I am actually strong because I have always had a group of wonderful humans around me. Instead of it just being me, in those situations it brought together 2, 3, 5, 10 people together in community to help and learn from each other. This is strength.
As I continue on in my journey in the music industry, I have noticed that with technology we have far more people trying to do everything themselves. This has created a bunch of weak depressed bedroom producers who are full of self doubt and wonder if they will ever be good enough, will they ever be able to do it all, be the best at it all. This type of culture has been created from a false idea of what it looks like to make music in what I call the real industry.
When I mentor people, it looks a lot like people bringing me their weakness and me helping them navigate that while also equipping them on how to become a more whole healthy human.
Their weaknesses look a lot like everyone else's, and what makes them strong is taking the step to talk with me or others. To need mentoring or counseling requires you to finally be in a place that says, I need others, I need clarity because this currently isn't working.
When you do this, when you take the first step to sharing your weakness with others you quickly find that this very weakness you're bringing to the table will become strength because it lets others in to help. The burden becomes lite as a feather, the stress begins to go away, our empty tanks get filled up and soon we realize what we were after was actually people to journey with, to help carry our weakness.
What is cool about this universe is that there are people in this world that love to do what you hate. What you are weak at, there are experts at it. I hate tuning vocals and editing things. I assumed everyone did. I met a girl a couple years ago who adores tuning vocals. She loves it, she does it all the time and she's terrific at it. The things she hates doing, I love doing. We get a better end product because of this. Our weaknesses have made us stronger. Our weaknesses made us be in community with each other and that is where the depth and deep joy of life is found.
Don't be afraid of your weaknesses or bad things that happen to you. Flip the script on it. When you notice a weakness, put out to the world that you need help.
When something bad happens to you, see it as a time to have community, to bring people in to help.
We are all longing for community, to be seen and heard as we really are, and our weaknesses are just the perfect thing to foster true community and life.
Peace
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