Sociologist Brene Brown's TED talk "The Power of Vulnerability" has garnered over 10 million hits (as of August 2013). For good reason: we are hungry for the freedom to admit our vulnerability. Brown pushes us to embrace our own brokenness, with the reality that we are not alone in it, that we are—or easily could be—just one step away from the broken people all around us. Brown says:

We are "those people." The truth is … we are the "others." Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug- addicted kid, one mental health diagnosis, one serious illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one affair away from being "those people"—the ones we don't trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don't let our children play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don't want living next door.