To be vulnerable is to be exposed to the possibility of loss—and not just loss of things or possessions, but loss of our own sense of self. Vulnerable at root means woundable—and any wound deeper than the most superficial scratch injures and limits not just our bodies but our very sense of self. Wounded, we are forced to become careful, tender, tentative in the way we move in the world, if we can still move on our own at all. To be vulnerable is to open oneself up to the possibility—though not the certainty—that the result of our action in the world will be a wound, something lost, potentially
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