powerless

It is strange to understand what this feeling is . . .

For so many of us, especially living in many of the communities that we do, it isn’t always that common for us to run up against this feeling. Maybe we feel it ever so slightly while we are on hold with Comcast for an hour and a half just to get our cable back on. To be honest, unless you have faced a fatal illness, most of us where I live don’t really know what this feeling is like.

Powerless is a situation in which you have zero control. You have to let the world play out without being able to stop it. I’ve felt this way when my parents had cancer and no matter how many resources I had or connections I employed, there was simply nothing to be done.

I’ve seen powerless in other ways as well. There are so many places in life where people do not have the ability to change the outcomes in front of them. War torn countries, extreme poverty, natural disasters . . . those are all things that happen that leave so many feeling powerless.

I guess the positive, in the smallest way is knowing that there are times when a simple adjustment to our thinking can make all the difference. Maybe it is an uncomfortable adjustment, but when you pull back and look at the big picture, you realize that you made a change in somebody else’s life — somebody who may have felt powerless. Maybe that is how we can tackle this uncomfortable, debilitating feeling . . . by being a stand up person for someone else.