“In what ways might courage, vulnerability, and belonging a part of my search?” I think that all these help us with the objective of “deepen your self-knowledge” as stated in the syllabus. As we start to “accept ourselves as enough” and “believe that what made [us] vulnerable, made [us] beautiful,” we will start to achieve the goal of self-betterment and self-knowledge. (Brown TEDx) We mask our vulnerabilities and that inhibits us from really getting to know people. We hide things because we are scared. Our fear turns to lies and our lies lead to shame and a sense of unworthiness. This unworthiness leads to heartache, masking, and withdrawal from community which are all detrimental to a proper knowledge of how loved we truly are by others and by God. This chain will continue to repeat if we allow it to. Or we can break it by breaking away from fear in the first place. This is obviously idealistic, but I have a couple ideas on how to make fear less ‘hardwired’ into our thinking. I think fear can be lessened when we can trust our authority figures not to judge our character from our worst mistake. I also think fear can be lessened when we can allow ourselves to trust in God’s providence. We are truly not the authors of our own life and therefore, we should not act like we can control everything.