Power is a tricky thing.
On some level, we all want it. We want to know that we possess the strength and courage and wisdom necessary to chart our own course. To steer our ship. To live into our own life’s purpose and make a meaningful contribution.
Yet despite this, we spend our lives tossing the very power we seek back and forth with the world like a hot potato. The minute we touch it, it becomes too real and we throw it away. The moment it slips through our fingers, we secretly wish it would return.
In other words, we haven’t decided we want our power more than we’re afraid of it.
And we’re afraid because great power brings with it great responsibility: Once we acknowledge our freedom to live the life we want, we become accountable to our hopes and visions. Once we accept the thing we’re being called to do, we’re challenged to rise up and meet our gifts and talents wherever they are. Once we attest to our own strength, we’re summoned to answer the call to battle. Even when that battle rages only within ourselves.
It’s easier for us to say we can’t live the life we want than to say we won’t.
It’s more comfortable to deny our power than it is to claim it.
To toss it away before it gets too hot to handle.
But the strange and compelling truth about power is this: it burns far worse to let go, than it does to hold on.