September 5

  

Today's quotation:

One of the paradoxes of our time is that we have more power at our disposal than ever before, and yet we seem more powerless than ever.


Ralph W. Sockman (1953)

Today's Meditation:

It's pretty amazing to think of the amount of power that we have available to us.  Just our cars, for example, give us a huge amount of power-- the power to travel, to get places quickly, to move heavy objects easily, not to mention the pure power that is created when the engine is running.  We can communicate with people anywhere in the world at a moment's notice, and we have almost instantaneous access to news that years ago would have taken a long time to get.

A question I ask myself pretty regularly, though, is whether I'm a good steward of this power.  And if I'm not using it effectively, how does that affect me?  I know that no one has ever taught me how to deal with the extraordinary amount of power available to me in my life, so I very often end up being powerless in situations in which there is a great deal of power available to me.

How do we use our energy?  To communicate?  To spread love and compassion?  Or to try to control the many things that we think we need to control?  Sometimes we spend so much of our power trying to control things that are out of our control that it ends up seeming like we have no power at all.

Our powerlessness seems to come as a result of situations that reveal it, but in truth, we are not powerless-- we only seem to be when we misdirect our energies.  If we can find positive ways to expend the powers that we have, then we'll find that we don't seem powerless any more, and the more we're able to do so, the more our confidence will grow, and the less often we'll seem powerless. . . .  It's one of those very positive cycles that only we can put into motion.

Questions to consider:

What do you think of yourself when you feel powerless?

In what ways might you redirect your power to use it more effectively?

How might you teach someone else to use his or her energy more effectively?

For further thought:

Free will is not the liberty to do what one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulses.  There lies freedom indeed.

George MacDonald

more thoughts and ideas on power

  

   

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