Power

It's a concept I've been grappling with. In lay terms power is the ability to influence the world; for example, you bump into me and I mess up your day. Or there's some law being put to vote I don't like so I make a call and poof! Several months' work and taxpayer money wasted.

In the martial arts, power is all about doing more work for less effort. So, either I kill you without breaking a sweat or I kill more people before I get winded.

Having power over your environment is a good thing, something to aspire to. It's kind of humanity's schtick, mastering our circumstances. But I can't help but think that the lay definition and the martial arts version are incompatible. See, in the first definition of power the focus is on the effect whereas in the latter the focus is on the process.

An office worker with his crew spreads a rumor about a colleague who is in an outgroup - not part of their clique. The rumor spreads, gains momentum and causes the colleague years of emotional turmoil. The guy that started it must be so powerful, huh? But for things to have turned out the way they did so many other factors had to fall in line. Just to talk about one factor,you're telling me he had a hand in the opinions of the people he was spreading the rumor to?

We save money and seek out high-paying jobs so we gain purchasing power. But if we die before we ever spend a cent, there's no difference between us and a pauper. We may be objectively rich, but effectively we're poor. It's the same with the kind of "power" a lot in our society desire in my opinion.

For another metaphor, and this I learned from an online crisis management course I took, imagine being ruined by some catastrophic, overwhelming occurrence. Say this event destroyed everything in your immediate vicinity, you don't have food or water or shelter. You're taxed physically, emotionally, spiritually even.

You find a big chocolate bar - it's still good. You're better than you were before, right? So, what do you do - do you save the chocolate, prolong your state of relative prosperity for a few more days; or do you eat it? After all, you might not find food anytime soon. It would make sense to keep what luxury you were "blessed" with as long as possible.

Except this would be wrong. Eating the chocolate would remind you of better times, and it would be to you a pleasurable treat - a high point in a situation that doesn't have much of those. It'll help get you in a calmer mindset. Eating it would also give you fuel for whatever you would need to do. Not eating now will make you hungrier and less in a rational mood; if deprivation doesn't kill you it will put you in a state where you'll make a blunder that can't be fixed by the chocolate you put off eating. 

Eating now and going hungry tomorrow is infinitely better than growing more malnourished today because eating won't fix all the conditions your body might get as a result of worsening health.

I kind of like the martial artist's definition. If I get more of the same kind of work done in the same amount of time or if I do the same work with less strain then I know I've grown. It's something that's part of me, like my arms or legs.