Thoughts on Power

     Ever since I was young, I was taught that small actions can leave a big impact, so I had to be very careful about what I did. I believe that, too. I believe that being a part of society means monitoring your small actions just as much as monitoring your big ones, just in case you hurt someone. I like to think that I’ve left a big impact with my small actions, that I’ve exerted power over the world by doing the right thing whenever I have the opportunity. I want to believe that even I, the creator of a dead end blog, can have enough power to change the world forever just through the act of living.

    Lately, I’ve been faced with a terrible question; is that enough? Is it enough to settle for a life where all I have are small successes? It’d be one thing if I couldn’t succeed, but the problem is that I don’t want to succeed, because success in a world like ours means you put yourself at risk of being exploited. Scratch that, being successful means that you are exploited, both by those above and below you. It’s one thing settling for small successes because you know you’ll never make it big, it’s another thing entirely to realize you’re settling for small success because you know that you won’t survive making it big. You know you live in a world where taking advantage of someone isn’t just common, but completely accepted, to the point where people get upset not when someone is taken advantage of, but when someone the world is supposed to care about is taken advantage of. 

      When exactly did I learn to accept that success will only make things worse? Was it in college when I kept failing class? Was it when I saw how our obsession with success made it impossible to live a normal life? Was it when I realized that our obsession with pushing things as hard as they would go was destroying our planet? Or was it when I realized our definition of success was narrow? I don’t know, and I don’t expect anyone reading this to answer. 

      I just know that success shouldn’t come with a nasty, bitter aftertaste. The taste that comes from realizing that this is your identity now; the person who did something amazing. For the rest of your life you’ll be expected to repeat that success every day, as though it wasn’t a fluke, and god help you if it wasn’t just a fluke. Every day you’ll be expected to be better, to climb higher, and even if no one expects anything from you, you’ll be so entrenched in your new reality that you’ll expect yourself to do better. It shouldn’t be like this, where success leads to a life of endless successes, and failure leads to endless failure. Failure is a whole other thing. Failure is worse than success, because we make it worse. We define what success is, what opens doors and what makes people like you, so whenever anyone can’t make it, it’s technically our fault. But whereas success only mostly ruins people’s lives, failure always leads to disaster. 

    I thought I’d be okay with a subtle form of power, one that I could go my whole life without revealing to people. But I’m not okay with living in a world where I don’t trust anyone. I want to live in a world where I can be myself and know that everyone else is okay with that. I’ve been fighting to turn our world into that world, and I’m now realizing that means a world where I can be powerful. Not wealthy, not popular, powerful. The kind of power that gets heard when it speaks. I need to live in a world where I know people won’t twist me into a form I wasn’t meant to be purely to keep a world that I hate alive. I need a world where when I’m heard, I feel proud, not scared. I need a world where I matter, because I know that it’s safe to matter.