POWER

Years ago, I was in my car driving somewhere that took me on the freeway. I turned onto the entrance ramp from the south and another car, which has been heading north, turned onto the ramp at the same time I did. It was an entrance near my house, I'd been through it countless times and I knew there were two lanes for a good distance before the road turned into a single lane.
    A woman was driving the other car. It had a sun roof and she was illuminated by the light. She was well-dressed, her hair in a bun, wearing a light colored jacket that probably was part of a suit. She looked like she was going to work. But all that registered later because when I looked at her, I saw her face was completely distorted by rage. I realized instantly that she thought I was cutting her off. Within a few moments, she must have seen the two lanes; needless to say, when they turned into one I let her go first.
     As I drove onto the freeway, I myself was jittery - it was disturbing to be the cause of so much anger. I lost her in traffic, but my internal camera had taken a snapshot of her enraged flushed face and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I could feel in my body what I think she felt - the heart suddenly racing, a sudden clench in her belly and chest, intense agitation. I wondered how many miles she had to go before she came down and could get on with the rest of her day. 
     All this happened a long time ago, but I've thought of her, seen her face, many times since.  I thought I recognized what it takes for someone to get that angry over thinking a car was cutting in. I spun out a story of a woman stifled at home or at work, someone who isn't getting what she thinks she deserves. Or someone whose husband just said he wants a divorce or someone who can't abide any kind of slight - can't you see me here and that I'm first?- and my driving onto the ramp at the same time as she was the simply more than she could take. Or maybe she was a person who was angry all the time. 
     Even that day on the freeway, I knew I never wanted my face to look like like hers had; I never wanted my body to feel the adrenaline rush of anger. But I had felt anger many times. How could I know what my face looked like when I felt it? Felt something close to pure rage at the many areas in my life that weren't going my way? If I didn't want my face ever to look like that woman's, I had to find some way to bring anger down to a very small part of everything inside me.
     When did I become the person who rarely takes offense? Who says, "you want to cut in, be my guest." Who says when a car passes me on the right, then gets into my lane and drives at a snail's pace, "Okay, I guess I'll look at the scenery." When did I become the person who knows that taking offense is to take a step into a power struggle - with other people in cars or on line in the supermarket where no one moves fast enough for me or in any of the many places I go through the day where people don't do what I want in the way that I want it at the pace that I think it should be. Demanding that the whole world run around me is no longer an option for me. I can't afford to get caught in any power struggles, to let my impatience get the better of me. I can't let my equanimity to be tied to what anyone else does or doesn't do.
     None of this came easily. Everything in the world was an object of my ego and I was in a power struggle with it all. When you secretly fear that you're puny and unlovable, you need every scrap of power you can get. But that kind of power is as distorted as that woman's face and there will never be enough of it unless things inside change. 
     It's another kind of power I've searched for and found, a force whose only expression rests in a calmness of mind, an ability to see the human being standing in front of me, an ongoing desire to keep walking toward as much liberation as I can know. It's a power greater than myself and I know now I can trust it. I started out as someone who thought only the accumulation of power in the world would make me whole. Somewhere along the line I learned that the only power I will ever have is power over myself and my attitudes and that's the power that will set me free.