Power

 It is the panorama of mad rush of people to grab power viewed in today’s world has urged me to focus on the word, ‘power’ and scribble a few lines regarding it here. The word when unfurled with the aid of dictionary meaning suggests one’s ability or capability for doing something. If that significance of the word is evaluated in the context of people’s deeds done today, it is then seen that power is directed through different courses by different people. All those courses can be specified into two broad categories such as one that acquires a derogatory nomenclature of being the wrong one and that happens to be rampant in today’s society. The other is the sporadic one but it always receives the commendation of being right or justified.

            Therefore, the adoption of wrong courses to channelize one’s power through is unbridled in today’s society. Hence, there are examples umpteen for the power exercised in wrong ways at present. It is often seen that people in influential positions due to their work status or financial or political background exercise their powers in unlawful ways to grab the opportunities to serve their purposes. Such exercise of power has its fallouts of depriving the individuals of their dues in different walks of life and casting a pall of gloom over their lives catching them into the mire of frustration. That exercise of power actually stems from a rigid selfishness in one’s self that is very hard to be blasted into nothingness. It is the utter selfishness in one that makes them exercise power to see them pleased and satisfied at the expense of others’ happiness.

            However, people’s misuse of power that is observed as widespread in today’s society should not dishearten one because the society is not yet shorn of all the righteous people though their  number tend to be in less. Those people’s exercise of their powers is not only to see their own selves contented but also to create a blissful state for all others. They often endow the others’ lives with bliss in forms of the latter’s problems getting solved or getting their dues awarded in apt manner with the interference of their power. Such exercise of power in right direction is caused by the mind characterized with magnanimity contrary to the narrowness to which the mind is often viewed to be subdued due to its selfish ends.  Such a magnanimous mind keeps it clean of arrogance. It never believes in hierarchy of rich or poor, high or low or weak or strong and is always sturdy in will to use power in serving others.

            It is the exercise of power in right direction makes the world a better habitat for all to live in with happiness. Hence, it is seen that various stringent laws are framed from time to time to coerce people to use their power justifiably. But people become often smart enough to manage the ways to dupe the law and utilize power for self interest. Therefore, no external compulsion can root out the will from one’s mind to misuse power until and unless the mind develops detestation for that. The mind will start abhorring the exploitation of power once it is inculcated with the righteous religious or moral principles. Hence, the mind should be shaped into a better one with those principles to harbor in it an all inclusive love and its complement, the quality of empathy right from childhood if it has to have the inclination to exercise power in right direction once the self is entrusted with it. It is when people are capable to put them in others’ shoes and hold the umbrella of love over all others, the desire to misuse power will take its leave from them.

            To build each and every individual into a beautiful one with the qualities of love and empathy being alive in them, the family and the school play a great role. Both the family and the school especially in the primary level should take the utmost steps to teach the children the values of love and empathy. Once those qualities are imprinted upon the soft minds of the children, they will be hard to be erased from there at any point in the lives of the children. When the mind is ennobled with the qualities of love and empathy, it takes on the wings of magnanimity and rises above the self-interest and is backed by a strong will to drive the power through a proper course. Such a use of power can obliterate gloom from the world and serve everyone with their share of happiness.

Therefore, care should be taken not only to nourish the bodies of the children with all the nutrients at their young age but also to feed their minds with the energies of love and empathy. That should be done if the world is desired to be a better place with power exercised in right or justified ways to light the lamp of happiness at everybody’s door regardless of their class, caste, creed or religion.

………Dr. Fathema Begum