Ratios

As humans, we thrive on love or power or a combination of the two. It seems like everything we do involve either one. I find myself favoring love, because you are suddenly engulfed in the rush of ecstasy that leaves you exhausted, yet fulfilled. Once this is achieved, we begin to feel invincible, because love and power comes hand in hand. I would like to believe that once you have love, you have power, but that is not always the case. Certain combination of the two can in the end leave you with nothing; this all depends on how you define each term. It can be the love for power or love of someone else. Too much love for something can lead to obsession, which might in the end be destructive, therefore, power and love should be limited.

Some go a lifetime in search for the perfect combination of love and power, but what happens when we never find it? We have to ask, “What must we do when we find ourselves falling down? Above all, we must refuse to choose between power and love. We must keep both drives in view and in hand. In this way they will remain connected, and each will make the other more generative” (71). This passage suggests that the ultimate match is finding equal amounts of both. We cannot settle for one aspect and ignore the other, because having both will enhance each of them.

In case where we have more love than power, or more power than love, it seems like, “We stumble when one of our legs is stronger than the other. We stumble when our power dominates our love, or our love dominates our power. Stumbling is not controlled and smooth; it is uncontrolled and unstable. When we stumble, we move forward, but haltingly and erratically and always at risk of falling down” (75). It is possible to have unequal amounts of love and power, but it may not be guaranteed not to fail. Having an endless amount of power can put you at the top of the social ladder, but leave you without love. It is as if power and love are a percentage, for example, you may have 80 percent power, thus leaving you with 20 percent for love. This, however, may not apply to every scenario, because both loves are not necessarily out of a 100 percent, but is in comparison to walking and stumbling.