Own Your Strength

Own Your Strength

I received a fun email this week. It said: “Loved seeing a strong woman in a key position of power yesterday. You were fantastic.” Who wouldn't want to celebrate that?

So, today we reflect:  what is it to own our own strength? For the key position of power that we most genuinely occupy is the power, authority and responsibility that we hold in relation to the choices that we make in our own lives.

A position of true power is not assigned from the outside world. A position of true power is claimed by owning our strength in relation to the inside world.

There's a metaphor for this that comes from Buddhist practice. When one sits on a meditation cushion or bench, this cushion or bench is often placed on top of a larger, thin cushion.  This larger cushion, about two feet wide and three feet long, softens the impact of the ankle on the ground.  So the space that belongs to you in a shared, community shrine room is the size of that cushion:  three feet long and two feet wide.  In the meditation practice, this is the size of the world for which you are responsible.  Can you take your seat?  Can you own the strength of that world?  Can you rule, like a sovereign, that world, within which you sit:  three feet long and two feet wide? 

Can we own the strength and confidence that we bring to our own bodies, and the power and strength that we embody through our own voice?

That’s how I described the exercise of final exam preparation to my students this afternoon. We will have a final exam. It means that there will be grades to support them as they move towards graduation, but the test isn't actually about writing the test. The test is one of growing in our capacity to own the power and strength of one's own voice.

Can they think in an interesting, creative, flexible and sophisticated way? Can they own the strength of one's own voice and say what they have to say?  Just like in life, there is no single one right answer. There is only the answer that we claim as being right for us.

Can we own the strength of one's own voice? The real test is how well we know how to do it in our lives.

What is it to own one's own authority such that one's voice becomes heard?

Let me offer some suggestions. 

First, I propose that it is an error to confuse kindness with weakness or aggression with strength. Aggression - in the sense of dominance, control, territoriality and the old colonial perception of “success” - the capacity to manipulate, to expand one's territory of control - is an expression of fear. It is rooted in fear. It seeks to compensate for an internal sense of “not enough”, grasping for more on the outside because there is some sense that there's “not enough” on the inside.  Because it is an expression of fear, it merits my compassion not my complicity. We don't need to empower cowardice by confusing aggression with strength.

What then is strength? It is that which creates, supports sustains and maintains life.   

Genuine strength is honed and polished like a well-tempered sword.

Owning the authority of one's own voice, owning one's own confidence, owning the capacity to vibrantly “be” is honed over time.  It is polished by means of the friction we have with others. 

We become increasingly strong because we have to be, for whatever reason.  Then, because of whatever it was, we have become more strong.  How could my strength have been developed were it not for the hard things, the undermining or the oppressive presences, that I have encountered?

The overt expression of forcefulness is sometimes required.  Strength itself is more often revealed through the spaciousness of our being, not the hardness of our edges.  It’s in grace and joyfulness, subtlety, playfulness, elegance and discretion. Genuine stre