“Power is the great aphrodisiac.” Henry Kissinger
I thought about power all day yesterday.
I have just been invited to give a TED-talk in Arizona in 2022, and if you don’t already know, every TEDx venue has a different theme. Subjects like growth, passion and connection all make the rounds. For this particular venue, the theme is power.
Sexual power. Political power. Professional power. Spiritual power. So many different types, and I have about six months to figure out how to apply the theme of power to my story.
I was ruminating on power while sitting at a traffic light yesterday, and I happened to glance in my rearview mirror at the line of vehicles behind me. It was rush hour, as “rush hour” as south Jersey can get, and traffic was pretty constipated. I was in the front of this line of traffic backed up a half mile, and it dawned on me that the fate of every single driver’s day, even their lives, was in my hands. Whether they were on time to work, alive for dinner, or present at their kids’ sporting events was up to me. All I had to do was drive safely and let them live their lives. Not crash, not hold up traffic, just drive forward.
And I felt this sophomoric adrenaline rush, this rush of power, like when I was chosen as line leader in elementary school. I remember that hoity-toity feeling like it was yesterday.
“That’s right, peasants,” I would think as I looked at my tiny minions forming a line behind me. “I’m line leader, and what I say goes. You do not move until I move, you do not eat until I eat, you do not do anything without my say so, understand? How does it feel?”
From my end it was intoxicating. That is, until the next day and someone else was chosen as the line leader. Then I became the peasant, and had to do as I was told. I hated that feeling of being a faceless, nameless amoeba in that primary school pecking order. I didn’t like handing that power over to someone else, especially if I felt like the person wasn’t worthy. A friend as line leader? Hells yeah! Dumb stinky Jacob who sat in the last row and picked his nose?
God no. How could I follow such a person into battle? A person without even the most minimal amount of cognizance concerning his personal grooming? Especially considering we were entering such a daunting situation fraught with peril, that of the elementary school recess yard?
Jacob couldn’t protect me! Jacob couldn’t call the shots in my life! What if I needed leadership, and he was busy picking his nose?
It wasn’t even that I cared about always being a leader. That was never it, and is not how I feel now. Leading is all about voice, presence and pressure. No, for me, it’s not about always leading, but more about rarely following.
This reticence in handing over the power in my life gets worse the older I get. I don’t like handing the power over to just anyone (power in the bedroom is a completely different subject, ya’ll). Life seems like a very silly game to me. Kiss the ass of this one, kneel at the altar of that one. Follow all the rules exactly how they’re laid out and one day, if you’re lucky and you work very very hard, the ones “in power” will throw you some scraps for your trouble.
But this is how the Game of Life is played. Adults who play the Game of Life well know that sometimes relinquishing power can be beneficial, nay essential, to one’s successes.
It takes longer my way, you know, and I’ve gotten in my share of trouble for it. That of living for myself. I’m 55, and I sometimes wonder if I had played by the rules more often, if I would have reached my goals faster.
Perhaps. But it wouldn’t have been as much fun. It’s been a blast. Have a great weekend.