from Pedro: Captain Love

A person that I can look up to is a person that knows how to balance the struggle of power and love. However, I believe that people tend to lean towards one or the other more. I prefer love to power because when I think of the word power I think of someone who is greedy, selfish, and ruthless. I know that not everyone is like that, but it seems that “our power becomes reckless and abusive” (71). I hear this story constantly, a person makes a lot of promises, shows the people love and at first might really want to do some good for his people, but power can change people. I agree that having that kind of power is hard though and it is impossible to please everyone. However, if love came into the picture it would make it easier for person in power to open their hearts to those who need it, which is the majority of the people in poorer countries.

It is a struggle, but I will use a soccer example again. I have been captain of my soccer teams since my sophomore year of high school. Being captain of the team is not an easy task, on the field you are the person with the power. I am a person that is more of a lover than a fighter, so I would lean towards love when talking to my teammates. I have had captains that get in your face and yell at you in front of the team, and I knew that I did not want to be that kind of captain. So I would tell my teammates what they needed to know but in an encouraging way, not bringing their confidence down. My friend was the other captain, and he was more of the power and I was the love so they balanced each other out. I noticed that when people needed to talk or needed advice they would come talk to me more than him. Which tells me that people lean towards love over power, because they fear or are intimidated by power. However, both power and love need to work in harmony, “each balancing out and bringing in and building up the other” (103).

Just get back up, when it knocks you down

“We all fall down, sometimes when we are inattentive and sometimes when the terrain we are traversing is treacherous. Falling down hurts, but we can learn from it. Falling down signals us that we need to reflect on what we have been doing and why and with what effect. Then we must pick ourselves up and, with greater attentiveness, try to move forward again” (73). Kahane has put into words what, I think, everyone should take to heart. It is nothing new that everyone has hard their share of hardships in all kinds of degrees. Life tends to throw all kinds of things at you that would knock you flat out on your butt whether it is love, work, school, family, or just plain life itself. There is the saying that the obstacles that you face define who you are, but the way you deal with those obstacles are also taken into account. Everyone’s circumstances are different and some may not be as fortunate in dealing with their troubles. Some may not like to be open about their problems, some may think opening up is a weakness and dealing with it solo is best, some may even have no hand reaching out to them in their time of need. Love is definitely a factor in helping someone who has found fallen into a hole. Reaching out a hand to someone who is going through tough times may be a simple gesture, but it is a very powerful one. Not everybody has the strength alone to get up from whatever pushed them down. Love will give them the power and support to help them stand and they may even need it as a crutch to keep walking forward. Falling down truly sucks, I know, we all know. Having a helping hand reach out to help you up can be the difference from standing on your own legs and being laid out on the floor. Some may see this as a weakness, but were all human. There isn’t a being on this planet that has no weakness within them. Going through some tough times myself, this quote really spoke to me. Friends who would do the smallest gestures like buying me a slurpee from 7/11, telling dumb jokes, and just being there really helps me through and gets me back up. I would rather grab that helping hand and walk forward with my companions than to stay on the ground getting my pants dirty any day.

Power vs. Love

When taking a look at my own life now in some ways I see a balance of power and love. The reason why I say some ways is because I think it is very hard for ones life to have every aspect and situation contain a complete balance of power and love. As I have grown older I have been able to have more parts of my life have a better balance between power and love but it has not always been that way. One story comes to mind when I think of me learning how to balance power and love.

It made me think of when I played volleyball. I started playing volleyball in third grade and I always loved it. I must admit, I was pretty good but growing up playing in the CYO (christian youth organizations) league at my private school they did not put the emphasis on winning. Sure I would feel let down when we would loose but I never let the game take over my life. When we would win it would feel awesome and I knew that the power inside me helped us win and I was a strong leader on the team. But as I said, if we lost I never let it get to me. I just enjoyed playing the game. When I got to high school things changed though. I was the only freshman on the varsity team and my outlook on the game changed. I was thrown into a vigorous, intense game that I was not used to. Playing all of a sudden became all about winning and getting to the top. If we lost, it was not acceptable and I started to feel so much more pressure playing. Also being the youngest on the team made the pressure even greater and I started to over analyze every move I made on the court. I would get really down on myself if we lost and it was not healthy for me. The love I once had was gone. During my sophomore year I felt the same way. My junior year I was co-captain and I had finally gotten back a little of my love for the game but playing volleyball was still not the same. Even though I was enjoying myself more, I still would over analyze all my mistakes and would be really hard on myself.
Finally my senior year came and I was captain. It was a different season. I was at the top, my team was relying on me to set the example and to be a good leader. Throughout the season my love for the game came back but the power inside of me stayed. I was finally able to have a balance between the two and it felt amazing. I realized that I had chosen one and denied the other which left me in 'peril' (54). Playing volleyball with just love left me with no competitiveness and I was not a leader. While playing with just power left me hating the sport and wanting to abandon my passion. Finally having a balance between both made me realize how important it is to put not just love into something but power as well.

While I was reading the end of chapter 4, Kahane says 'Falling down signals to us that we need to reflect on what we have been doing and why and with what effect. Then we must pick ourselves up and, with greater attentiveness, try to move forward again' (73).

Love is All You Need (Maybe)

"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 risk of falling down." (75)

Unlike most people, I do not crave power or even, attention. For me, power is something people with superiority complex want to feel better about themselves. I know it might seem highly judgmental but it is my opinion. While I may have never been the poster child for high confidence, I have had enough when I was younger and presently. Power has never remotely interested me. 

Love however, has always had a place in my heart as cheesy as it might sound. As a song once said, it does indeed make the world go around. Love makes us feel accepted and belonged. We have an actual placement. We are not alone. Love is simple yet complicated. Love is a freshly bloomed flower but can sting worse than a hornet. Love is a giant hypocrite.

Like the quote from page 75 shown above, it is difficult to have an even balance between love and power. With too much love, power is seen as not needed or not as important. With too much power, people tend to forget to love. They go on power trips and forget what's truly important. Only with persistence and precision, the individual person can indeed find a balance. It is however, a truly delicate art. So many people fail. So few succeed. 

I too, can go on and say how I have had my share of stumbling especially since I never care too much for power as I previously mentioned. I overdosed on love and left myself blinded. I was recklessly driven by love and wanted to spread it all around. My vision became clouded and I forgot others do not always work that way. They felt smothered rather than adorned. With a little power added, it could have been more helpful and less crazy. Too much love made too much of a mess. I am still cleaning it up. In conclusion, I believe love and power could/should co-exist beside one another in healthy portions but it is essential to keep a certain grace and balance with said topics. Don't forget to love, but also don't forget you have a voice or even power sometimes, even if you prefer you didn't.

from Adam: Support

Through reading “Power and Love” it has become clearer to me the necessity for self-reflection. Without knowing the self one cannot begin to embark upon the journey of change. What is it to be changed without knowledge of what is flawed? Shay Ben Yosef states, “It is always us who is blocking us” (76).
The fear of power can often times be because of the fear of power-over. To have power-over people in the pursuit of exercising my own power toward a goal is a situation I would rather avoid. To incorporate both love and power into my everyday life evenly is going to be a lifelong journey. They must be embodied and seen within everything.

Power and Love and Basketball

When my dad taught me how to play basketball, he taught me the skills I needed to win games. He taught me how to shoot, defend, and read opponents. As I continued to play basketball through my childhood, I continued to be taught more ways to win. I guess you can say I played basketball with a focus on “power.” It seems, in my case, Kahane was right when he wrote that people tend to focus on either power or love (71). However, basketball “power” did win games, tournaments, and championships but it didn’t allow me to enjoy the game. I didn’t have “love” for the game and I always put myself down after every loss. Power and love on their own can provide for people but they may not always be enough. A combination of the two is necessary in order to get the most out of the situation.

But during high school, I discontinued playing in leagues and tournaments and participated in cross country and track. During this time off from competitive basketball, I continued to play with friends and practice on my own time. During this time, I grew to enjoy playing because of my friends and because I was having fun. I started to appreciate the game and began to have a “love” for it. As I started to get back into basketball, I was playing the best basketball of my life. I participated in leagues again and I was doing better than I had ever done before. A balance of practicing “power” and playing because I had a “love” for the game allowed me to play to the best of my ability. Even as I lost, I still held my head high whenever I knew I competed to the best of my ability.

Love and power must stay connect because they make each other more generative (71). In other words, they both work themselves out to benefit each other. In my case, I had already focused on power and was able to find the love I had for basketball to make a drastic change in the way I played during basketball games and my reactions toward game outcomes. A balance in love and power changed the type of player I was. The same can be said for this class, we are making efforts to spread the knowledge (power) to the people in the community and we leave it to those people to act on that power for the love of the community that they are a part of. If a balance of power and love for basketball can change the player I am then a balance of power and love for the community can change people to act for the benefit of their community.

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.

"and we fall down.."

I do believe we fall to one side or the other when it comes to power and love. Power, unlike other emotions, comes with a lot of bagage in my opinion. When someone is powerful you have many stereotypes that go along with it. "Our power becomes reckless and abusive." (p. 71) Something i seem to always relate to power is recklessness. It seems that once one has power they become greedy and ruthless, becoming something unable to improve anything. I feel, at times, power doesn't learn from its mistakes. It takes a very strong bold person to admit they were wrong, especially when power is involved. I feel the league i fall in is love. Love is what i try to live my life by. I feel that it is the only emotion that can relate to all people, everywhere in the world. People who love are constantly checking on their own thoughts and how it might be effecting others. "... reflect on how they might need to change what they themselves are thinking and doing." (p.59) Reflection is key in loving. To reflect is to look deeper into what you are doing and what needs to be done. This act is not selfish nor is it indulgent. "... our capacity to take a next step that will move us forward depends on our capacity to recognize the state of our power and love." (p.56) My state of love involves acceptance. I believe we need to see and accept how our world is running, only then can we go back to change it for the better. We must fall down before we can get up and put fourth ideas that will change how our society sees things. I have fallin down many times to get to the place where i stand today, with the most open eyes and mind as possible. i also believe no one is perfect but we must try our hardest to improve and see our faults to ever make any difference. "Then we must pick ourselves up and, with greater attentiveness, try to move forward again." (p.73)

Walk. Walk. Walk.

Crawling, stumbling, falling (multiple times), and walking with balance; all are steps to learning how to walk as a child. Also, all are steps to make an equal dosage of power and love. Although power and love are often found where only one is conveyed, a successful world, or a success in a certain situation, can be solved with a compromise of power and love.
Kahane describes this dilemma of the struggle for compromise between power and love in chapters 3-6, with the description of falling, stumbling, and walking. In his sense, this “dilemma” refers to “a challenge that consists of two propositions, each of which, if pursued too aggressively, will disturb the health of the whole and therefore needs to be balanced by the other” (54). This exactly explains the necessary compromise needed between power and love. If one is without the other, both will fall into peril.
Kahane then continues to use an example of walking, and relateds it to the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Rather, I like to think of this balancing act, in relation to learning how to walk as a child. When you’re younger and learning how to walk, you need to take small steps, eventually learn how to crawl—slowly inching your way around; you then learn how to walk, slowly, falling and stumbling often. However, in this stumbling and falling, you learn that you cannot walk on only one leg, “just as we can’t address our toughest social challenges only with power or only with love. But walking on two legs does not mean either moving them both at the same time or always being stably balanced” (54).
If an equal balance of power and love can be reached in today’s world, we would all be left in a better position—working with one another and living better, as well as healthier lives, in relation to today’s food system. This world can only continue on and succeed if we find a common ground, wher both power and love can walk around equally. Walking on our own two feet, as in working with power and love, “each balancing out and bringing in and building up the other. When we walk, we move forward, learning as we go” (103).

prompt for Love and Power 3-5 (from Adam)

From reading Power and Love we know that it is difficult to embody both power and love. We as humans tend to fall into predominately one of the two camps. Not saying that one is absent, all or nothing, but that one is dominate:

“For political or philosophical or psychological reasons, we often mistakenly choose to pay attention either only to power or only to love. Most of us prefer one of these drives to the other, or deny one in favor of the other. Even if we understand the need to employ both drives, when under pressure and frightened and constrained, we often revert to our habitual choice of either power or love.” (71)

What camp, power or love, do you believe you favor or deny? How might you begin embodying the two? Is this possible?