We've got a staggering relationship with power these days.
Perhaps this is nothing new....
But culturally, right now, we seem quite disconnected from a healthy perspective on where real (good) power comes from. Our headlines continue to overflow with examples.
During a conversation with the New York Times that was reported today, Trump said “the only thing that can stop me” is “my own morality. My own mind.”
Trump was responding to a question about checks on his power to attack nations around the world. But his response is increasingly relevant to his power domestically.
-- Robert Reich
Our leaders are forfeiting the opportunity to help us, both by neglect and by intention — both by what isn't said and by what is.
Power is often motivated by some kind of end-game. We will use it to get what we want and we will come up with nearly endless justifications for its use, to the point that we no longer recognize that it, in and of itself, becomes the driver (rather than whatever it is we are trying to secure).
Fear is usually at the core of power, but greed is right behind it. And, this form of driver is grotesque with nearly any perspective of distance.
Real power, however, is manifest in the opposite direction. It is not motivated by things like fear and greed. It operates from something far deeper; the thing that we no longer even recognize in the lust that power inflames within us.
Love.
Love is what we both lack and want more than anything else. It is no strange irony that we will even resort to misuse of power to get it (even though that very misuse effectively forfeits it). Somehow, though, we've ended up concluding things like our side must eradicate the other side to secure that love.
We have, as a result, not eradicated the barrier to what we want as we had hoped, but the very ability to know what it is. Power, in this state of things, is no longer liberating, but enslaving. It not only damages those impacted by its implementations, but it renders us unable to even consider its ramifications on ourselves.
While we can legitimately blame our leaders for this, thus ultimately is on us. Too often, they are no better than we are (even if they should be). If we don't understand these things, how can we require them to? We have to understand, and live from, real (good) power, collectively and individually — the power of love.
