Consider the following comments on vulnerability.
The hardest thing I ever did was let someone see me need them.
We mistake the armour for the self and then wonder why we feel unreachable.
To be known is the thing we want most and guard against hardest.
Vulnerability shared with the wrong person is not courage, it is a wound reopened.
Strength that has never trembled is just inexperience wearing a straight face.
Write a reflective piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your thinking and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
A reflective approach treats vulnerability as the thing we are taught to hide and quietly long to be allowed, the gap between being seen and being known. Open with a particular moment of exposure, admitting you were wrong, asking for help, letting someone witness your fear, and the discomfort that came with it. Then set two stances in tension: vulnerability as the only door to genuine connection, and vulnerability as a risk that, given to the wrong person, leaves a lasting injury. A useful structural move distinguishes the chosen openness that builds intimacy from the forced exposure that simply hurts. Caution: resist the fashionable creed that vulnerability is always strength, since discernment about when and to whom you open up is its own quieter kind of courage.