Who Took My Power?

You didn't lose your power. You just forgot where you planted it.

Sidenote: There are many people who are oppressed and struggle to even have the most basic power over their lives. I fully acknowledge that and I am not denying these experiences. In this short essay, I’m attempting to tease apart this real world truth and your True Power within to connect to yourself, to experience a spiritual feeling of home and to find inner love and peace.

Power. We all have it, but you’d think it was a hidden gem buried in some far away land. Since there are gatekeepers to power, we obsess over it and spend our lives wondering: Who has the power? How do I get some?

We think of power as a thing you get. Or something you earn. Being a coveted thing, it’s easy to fall for the narrative that it can be given or taken away. For example, you may have been told growing up that you don’t have any (and never will). Or you might’ve been taught that you have no choice (a cousin of power).

You’ve spent your life looking for power. You looked high and low, near and far. Under the rock of beauty, or over the hill of fame. You might have sniffed it in the air, losing the scent as someone else traveled too quickly ahead of you.

Or perhaps in school when they gave out power awards for smartness or coolness, you skipped that day. And continued your search for many years, post high school, with the same insecurities and uncertainties that kept you stuck in a power struggle of your own identity.

And then one day, out of sheer luck, you spotted power on a pedestal and snatched it up. You held onto it for dear life. You squeezed it so tight. Nothing could make you give this up. You felt safe and possibly whole, for a time.

Slowly this power began to drain out as family members tugged on your emotions, placed blame or dished out back-handed compliments. Until one day you opened your hand and it was empty. Where did the power go?!

Now you’re in midlife, with life-sized scars running the length of your soul. You see the power for what it is. You see power for who it is.

You begin to turn inward for the search and find an endless field of daisies. All the power you’ve ever wanted. Your own True Power within. Nothing you need to grasp or prove or buy or sell or trade or accomplish or do unspeakable things for. You remain intact. You continue to be yourself.

Only now you are a factory of self-generating power. You are your own generator. You never have a power outage. You are fully self-sufficient. Your only “job” is to go back to the field for fresh daisies, as often as you like, for the pure joy of it. Fresh daisies that regrow and flourish and pollinate themselves. A place of eternal power in a field of your own making.

With a view of the horizon and the promise of home.