Vachon Imagined

We all want to feel powerful. It is a basic human desire to have some sense of control over our bodies, our lives, and what happens to us. We want to feel power, taste it, be recognized for it, and sometimes even be identified by it.

The world applauds many forms of power. There is social power, the power that comes from being seen, represented, recognized, and valued. When people have spent years feeling invisible, unheard, or diminished, recognition can feel like power. When people feel powerless for long enough, the desire to reclaim that power can become intense. Sometimes it appears as self-assertion. Sometimes as anger. And sometimes, tragically, it becomes personal attacks or even violence.

Why? Because we want to feel that we have control over our lives.

But the truth is, we don’t control nearly as much as we imagine.

I don’t control what my son says. He just says it. I don’t control what thoughts enter my mind. I just think them. I don’t entirely control my preferences, my emotions, or even the ways I respond to the world. So much of what happens within us simply happens.

This is where the deeper fear of powerlessness begins. We live in a world where some people have enormous influence while others feel that their thoughts, experiences, or identities cannot safely be expressed. When we believe we cannot be seen, heard, accepted, or valued, we begin to fear that we will always remain that way.

We begin to fear that we are not enough.

But power is not the same thing as control.

There are people with very little money who possess an extraordinary sense of dignity, joy, and freedom. There are also people with enormous wealth, influence, and status who are deeply miserable. Poverty does not automatically make someone powerless, just as wealth does not automatically make someone powerful.

Real power comes from how securely we inhabit ourselves.

The most powerful people I have encountered do not need to prove that they are powerful. They don’t need to dominate the room or constantly announce their importance. They know themselves. They don’t hide their power, but they don’t need to put it on display either.

They carry it.

They know it even when they don’t feel it. They walk in it even when there is no external evidence to confirm it.

That is what genuine power looks like: not the ability to control everything, but the ability to remain rooted in yourself when you cannot control what happens around you.

And when you meet someone like that, you know it.

Something in you recognizes something in them.

For a moment, you remember that what you are seeing in them also exists in you.