A question I’ve been asking a lot of my friends recently is what their take is on the difference between transparency and vulnerability.
The best way that I have come to understand the difference so far is to use a fishbowl as an example. Transparency is having a glass fishbowl that you can see into. You can walk all around it and see everything going on inside. Vulnerability is actually putting your hand inside the fishbowl and moving things around. Having the ability to create change on the inside.
In general, I’ve always considered myself a fairly transparent person. Maybe to a fault. If someone asks me something, I almost never will say it’s too deep or I’m not comfortable talking about it. It seems that being transparent is something really healthy for forming deep friendships quickly.
Some people are much more closed off. You can ask question after question trying to dig deeper, but they never will let you in. It may take months or even years to get to where you can see the full fishbowl.
I have some friends that it’s felt like I’ve seen 90% of the fishbowl in two days and other friends that it seems I’ve been looking at their fishbowl for 8 years and still can’t see halfway into it.
It reminds me that there are many levels of friendship and intimacy. Some friends I enjoy because of the intellectual connection, some friends I enjoy for the experiences we have together, some because of spiritual connection, etc. But that’s getting into the intimacy, which is a topic for another post.
It’s hard to know exactly what vulnerability looks like in our lives and what exactly is the proper amount of vulnerability for what level of friend? Whereas transparency I think almost everyone could have more of, vulnerability is something you must be very careful about. The more vulnerable you are to people, the more you open yourself up to hurt.
Not all a bad thing as I also think that the more vulnerable you are the deeper you are able to love others. There are pros and cons to it, just like everything else in life.
This is one of the things that has been on my mind a lot lately. What is the balance of transparency and vulnerability? What do you allow people in on and what do you not? What level of friendship warrants more vulnerability or transparency? Is it unwise to be too transparent with people?
So many questions. Until I have it solved, I’m just going to keep living, but if you have it figured out, let me know.