Lesson 11 – What My Cousin Jimmy Taught My About Power
Power is a funny thing. In Lesson 11, Simpleology talks about the Pathway to Power and how to find the most direct and consistent route towards finding your power. But power isn’t a substantial goal, it isn’t something that can be quantified and stored. Power is an entity that comes through hard work, respect and dedication. Most of the time, people with power don’t even realize they have it.
When I was in junior high my cousin enlisted to join the army. Three months after he joined, my aunt packed us all in the car and we took a drive to visit him on his base. His base was having a visiting day to show us how much the soldiers had progressed in just three months. They put on a little show for us, they ran drills with flags and guns and it was all really quite impressive.
The soldiers all moved together. They marched and saluted as if they were one entity. I remember being astounded by the absolute precise actions that these dozens of people performed simultaneously. Each gun was twirled at the same speed and each rifle cocked at exactly the same moment producing one united sound instead of dozens of individual sounds.
Afterwards I was talking to Jimmy, that’s my cousin, and he sounded less like the kid I knew and more like a man. He sounded more serious and more determined than I’ve ever heard him sound before. I asked him what had happened to him and what was it about him that changed?
He stared at me like I had an arrow through my head. He told me I was crazy and he was the same person he’s always been. He told me that the army hadn’t changed him a bit and that he was still the goofy kid I’ve known for years, but watching him during the drills, I knew he clearly wasn’t the same person who only a year earlier taught me how to throw rocks at cars from behind shrubbery so I wouldn’t get caught. He seemed to be infused with an aura of respect that I never saw in him before.
Years later, I realized that the aura of respect that I saw surrounding Jimmy was power. He had transformed from a neighborhood hoodlum into a soldier demanding respect and he didn’t even know that he was any different. Years later Jimmy and I sat down and talked about that day, we both remembered it well. I remembered it as the first time in my life that I witnessed pure power and he remembered it as the first time he felt respected.
We both used that moment in our lives to understand the power that true, unbridled power possesses and how it can come so quietly. Simpleology teaches us this very same lesson , how power needs to be stroked and maintained and only then will it consistently be there when we need it.