I remember a situation in which several people were discussing a decision, and one of them quite clearly held the greatest formal power in the room. He could determine what would ultimately happen. He spoke at length, explained his position, interrupted others and left no doubt about who had the final say. What impressed me less than his authority was something I only became aware of later: the more strongly he had to display his power, the less powerful he seemed to me. Another person in the room barely spoke. When he finally did, it was calmly, clearly and without any attempt to overpower anyone. The sentence immediately changed the atmosphere. No one had to obey him, and yet everyone listened. On the way home, I could not stop thinking about that difference. One of them had power. The other seemed to be something I could not yet name at the time. Today, I would say this: he stood in his own power without needing to demonstrate it.
Since then, I have often wondered whether we recognise power too readily only where it is visibly exercised. We see positions, possessions, reach, influence and the ability to make decisions that affect other people. All of that is real power. It can protect, shape, take responsibility and equally be abused. But it is always dependent on circumstances. A position can be lost, money can disappear, influence can change and people can stop following. What interests me, therefore, is less the question of how much power someone possesses than what remains of them when the external means of enforcing something are suddenly no longer there. Who am I when no one has to listen to me? How secure am I in a decision when no one admires it? How much of my strength remains when I cannot control anything?
I recognise in myself the desire to influence situations, even though in the past I would not necessarily have identified it as a need for power. It can begin with something as simple as wanting another person to understand me properly. I explain myself again, choose my words more precisely and eventually realise that I no longer merely want to be understood. I want the other person to adopt my point of view. Or I try to avoid a particular reaction by choosing my words so carefully that, ideally, nothing unpleasant can arise. That too is a form of control. It looks far gentler than an order, but it touches the same desire: reality should unfold in a way that allows me to feel safe within it. Only over time did I begin to recognise how easily having power can become confused with the need not to have to tolerate uncertainty.
Being power feels different to me. Even the expression is unusual because power is normally something we possess or exercise. When I speak of being power, I do not mean a superior state, nor some spiritual idea of becoming untouchable. For me, this form of power begins where I no longer need every external circumstance to be right in order to remain inwardly with myself. I can hear a different opinion without my own immediately feeling threatened. I can receive a no without automatically turning it into a rejection of who I am. I can set a boundary without having to humiliate the other person, and I can admit a mistake without feeling that it makes me smaller. From the outside, these things often appear rather unspectacular. To me, however, they require more inner strength than much of what is commonly regarded as strength.
The longer I observe people, the more often I wonder whether the urge for external power sometimes becomes especially strong where something inwardly feels insecure. Someone who can only feel themselves when others obey needs that obedience. Someone who derives their worth from being needed may find it difficult to allow others to manage without them. Someone who defines themselves through knowledge may experience disagreement more readily as a threat. Of course, that does not mean every powerful person is inwardly insecure. Such a simplification would not do justice to the subject. But I know the mechanism well enough in myself to take it seriously. Wherever I feel an urgent need to prove something, it is worth asking what is really at stake. Often, it is less the matter itself than an image of myself that I do not want to see damaged.
For me, this is also where an important distinction lies between power and responsibility. Power may give me the ability to decide something. Responsibility begins only with the question of what I do with that ability. I may be able to influence someone and still choose to leave them to find their own way. I can be right and still listen. I can be stronger and still step back. Such decisions do not feel to me like giving up power, but like evidence that I am not ruled by it. Someone who has to use every opportunity to exert influence may possess their power less than it appears from the outside. In that case, the power possesses them. For me, inner freedom reveals itself more in the moment when I could do something and can still ask whether I actually want to.
Spirituality is not immune to questions of power either. Especially where people are looking for guidance, healing, meaning or inner experiences, knowledge can quickly become authority. Someone who has experienced something another person has not yet encountered can easily slip into the role of the one who knows. I have found in my own experience that this is precisely where caution matters. A personal spiritual experience does not become greater because I make it the standard for someone else. To me, a person loses nothing of their strength when they say, ‘This is my perception. See for yourself what, if anything, feels true for you.’ Quite the opposite. I experience more power in that than in claiming to possess the truth about another person’s experience. Where no one needs to be made dependent, a form of authority emerges that does not have to prove itself.
That is precisely why this subject also touches I – Your Best Liar for me. While writing the book, I kept returning to how skilfully we can hide our own motives from ourselves. The need for power rarely calls itself power. It can appear as care, a sense of duty, reason or the wish to want only what is best for someone. All of that may be genuinely meant and still contain another element. Perhaps I want to be needed. Perhaps I want to be right. Perhaps I find it difficult to tolerate another person making a different decision from the one I believe is right. For me, self-observation begins exactly where I no longer have to smooth over such contradictions immediately. I can love someone and still try to influence them. I can want to help and still need recognition for doing so. Only when I allow myself to see both can I stop telling myself that my motives are always as pure as I would like them to be.
Today, I therefore recognise power less in volume, status or the ability to get one’s way. I see it more in those inconspicuous moments when someone has nothing to prove. When a person can enter a room without wanting to possess it. When they can speak without making someone else smaller. When they can walk away without still needing to win. And I notice in myself how different a moment feels when I am no longer fighting to create a particular effect. Something remains that is harder to display but easier to sense. Perhaps having power is the ability to move the world around me. Being power begins, for me, where I no longer have to abandon myself simply so that the world moves in the way I would like it to.