from Amber. . .

POWER; a word that many are afraid of and others take advantage of. I believe that majority of the world takes this word too lightly and the other percent takes the word to the extreme. Power is an extremely beautiful thing and can be overlooked or turned into something ugly, causing the many that's afraid of the word to feel powerless and creating a manipulative meaning for those to walk all over the word. Everyone holds power in many different ways. Lappe' expresses that, "Power is an idea."(122)I agree. I believe that power is the idea of many things. It is the idea of overcoming, idea of being on top, idea of change, idea of freedom, idea of plenty more; which is always great until taken to the extreme and wanting to hold too much of it. In my opinion, no one should have too much power; too much of anything is never good. This is when and why power can be viewed as negative.

The original meaning is, "to be able". (118) This definition says a lot by itself. It lets me know that power exists in all forms seen and unseen. Everyone is able to do something which gives everyone power, this is why in the last blog I disagreed when she mentioned, "We feel powerless". We might feel powerless but, there is a form of power we all overlook; silent power. Power doesn't have to exist as big; power can be as little as overcoming internal obstacles. It's based on intention not just action to me. It’s much bigger than we think, but the world sees differently. Here in the U.S it seems as though the wrong things create power, such as money, talent, fame, winning, etc, but honestly those are the things that make no difference to me. Why should money or fame make one feel better than another? Those are both things that won’t even last for long. It can be gone in a blink of an eye, so why do we think such things and give in to such things; just an example.

One thing I do agree with is that, "Power is necessary to produce changes I want in my community."(117) We are given plenty opportunities to create change and even when not given openly we still have the power to do anything to keep evolving. Power is in every individual’s hand.