your fear of vulnerability is ruining your posture

I’ve lived in the white-picket, over-fertilized grass, nosy neighbors suburbia most of my life. Here, familiarity can hug you like a comforting blanket or choke you in its smothering. I’ve always found it much more smothering than comforting. The same kind of people, doing the same thing, over and over, faking niceties and big smiles, putting on a manufactured show of what it means to be doing well in life when it is actually plagued by mundanity and averageness.

I wanted realness. I wanted to see people truly care, to erupt with laughter from their stomach or cry from the pits of their heart. What I didn’t anticipate, was how isolated it could make me feel. You could walk around the city without getting a second glance, let alone a tug of the lips. I didn’t realize how much I craved needing to be seen. To not feel invisible. To know that even if a day went by without seeing friends or talking to family, someone would see me and my presence would matter.

In small towns, life unfolds in slow, steady rhythms—familiar, predictable, and tenderly monotonous. When people venture out, their heads are high. They are looking for the lifeline of connection. They need a dose of chaos, surprise, and novelty from interaction.

But the city flows at a different pace. People move like currents, pulled in directions by invisible tides, always having somewhere to go, somewhere to be. Peoples’ lives are already so chaotic and hectic, that they need silence and monotony. Like mannequins, their face remains expressionless or they are completely detached from reality and obsessed with their partner’s presence. Their commute is their small haven of alone time, a sliver of boringness is their boisterous lives. They are not looking for serendipity or connection. They are pulled inwards and downwards, often staring at their phone or holding an empty gaze.

I do feel a lot more agency in the city. I can wake up and decide from one day to the next to do completely different things. This is much harder in the suburbs. But I miss the micro expressions of connection and intimacy. I miss going to the grocery store, pushing around a cart, and simply perusing. Taking something off the shelf and then a stranger telling me it’s their favorite food, going on about their grandma’s secret recipe and how it’s become Thanksgiving tradition. While my friendships in the city are much deeper connections, I crave these seemingly meaningless and surface-level moments as well.

I think the lack of serendipitous moments comes from fear. We justify shrinking into ourselves by the network of people we already have. It feels like I have a lot more to lose if an interaction doesn’t go well, because it would be a much harder hit to the ego. In the suburbs, the need for connection bypasses the initial discomfort. But in the city, I cannot accept agitation. It is so much easier to plug in my headphones and transport myself into a bubble than to open up and be vulnerable.

My friend told me her parents met on a bus. They started talking, and the dad wanted the mom’s address to send her a postcard. She gave her phone number instead. Does that still happen these days? Do people still meet their life partner on the bus?

Our fear of vulnerability and egotistical obsession with our productivity is evident in our biology. Our focus is constantly being pulled downwards. “Nerd neck” develops when the head moves forward from constant scrolling, sitting, and looking down. It causes muscles in the neck to atrophy and load on the spine to increase. Not only does it make you less attractive, but also dumber. The neck is a biological pipe system of arteries, transporting blood and oxygen from the heart to the brain. When these arteries are blocked, flow is greatly reduced. Having a forward neck posture is like creating a massive kink right before blood gets to your head, making it terrible for cognition and hair loss.

The muscles and fascia (supportive connective tissue), operate through the laws of tensegrity. They rely on coherence and balance to function optimally, the right amount of tension and relaxation. Perhaps it is not only our body, but our entire being that operates from this principle. We need the right amount of solitude and connection, depth and breadth, to feel whole. When you are constantly pulled down, don’t forget to look up. Energy flows where attention goes. Don’t you want it to be towards growth, towards moving upwards, towards expanding? It’s only when you begin to look up and savor the world that you see how much you’ve missed. You realize it’s in the crinkle of the eyes, the slope of a smile, the catch of a gaze where true intimacy lies.