Last year, I wrote this post called Baggage Claim. If you have not heard of Brené Brown or heard her TED talk, please click that link. Today, I watched an interview with her, and was reminded again of the word “vulnerability” and the power it holds. Watch this:
She had me in tears speaking of this famous excerpt:
The Man in the Arena
Excerpt from the speech “Citizenship In A Republic”
delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. ~Theodore Roosevelt
As I left the doctor’s office for what seems like the thousandth time, and the tears began to prick the back of my eyelids, and I thought yet again, why couldn’t I have something easy, why couldn’t doctors help me, why couldn’t this be cured, why me? Why me? I knew the answer. I spend my time devoted to a worthy cause. I help others who feel lost find their way. Even if I can hardly get out of bed in the morning, and as I walk I feel as if I am wading in quicksand, and the muscles knot up each and every night, and I sit with one heating pad on my shoulders and one on my lower back, and I wake up in the morning with clenched teeth because even in sleep I am fighting the pain, I know the answer. It was always supposed to be this way. I am in the arena because I dare greatly.
