Power
There are many different kinds of power. When I think of power, initially, I think of world leaders or those who have a lot of money. In our society, those seem to be the groups of people who wield all the power. It can make those of us who fall in the spectrum of “regular people” feel like we do not have a lot of say in what goes on around us. That we just have to go with the flow, deal with the hand we were dealt and let those who hold the power control everything.
In the last year or so I have become acutely aware of the idea of “personal power”. It is ironic that in the aftermath of my medical issues with Covid that I started wielding this personal power more than I did before this virus pulled the rug out from under me. Perhaps it was the fact that I had tumbled so far down to a point where the only path to go was up.
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Power does not come easily, at least in terms of personal power. It is a journey. It can be riddled with speed bumps, hard terrain, and obstacles to overcome. I feel as though the power comes to you through the hard times. Can we really appreciate our own personal power unless we have had to forge it in fire?
My journey to reclaiming my power has felt a lot like the cycle of the mythological phoenix. An endless cycle of burning, being reduced to ash, and then rising from the ash anew. It has felt as though I have gone through this cycle several times in the last year. A reemergence of a new person that looks like me, talks like me but is new and hopeful. It is really within the renewal of the phoenix side of ourselves that we find that power.
Sure, there are powerful people in the world. Ones we look to and wonder if we will ever be that powerful. Yet, we have power on our own. True power from stories we write in our experiences. Lessons learned from hard times. The love we give and the love we receive. Being in charge and having money is nice, but true power happens when we look upon the future as our true authentic selves and do so without any apology.
That is the true nature of power.
