Responding to People in Power

There are topics about which I feel confident and settled in my knowledge and experience to speak with a sense of inner authority. How we transform the legacy of millennia in learning how to respond to those in power eludes me. I keep thinking that I have a piece of the answer, and then I see even more fully how immense the challenge is. Nevertheless, I want to contribute my share to a conversation I didn’t start and which I hope can be ongoing in many circles as we come to see our complicity, both when we have formal power and when we don’t, with maintaining things as they are. I want this conversation to become bigger so that we can tap into our collective wisdom, beyond what I or any one person can offer. I share these thoughts with the humility of knowing I truly don’t know what the way forward is.

Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, speaks more than once about the fact that people in power shit just like everyone else. I remember being startled by the bluntness of this image. For myself, I have preferred a different way of aligning myself with the complete and radical shared humanity of all. I remind myself that whoever the person is I am thinking of was once an infant, and I immediately touch my hope that, at least then, that person was loved. Different as these two methods are, they both point to the same truth, though I doubt that Kundera shares my fervent desire for each person on the planet, including all those who have harmed others, to receive sufficient love that harm would stop. This, for me, is one aspect of being able to transform, within myself, how I respond to power. I want the well-being of the person in power even when I want to oust them from power, even when I want to do everything in my power to stop them from doing further harm.