In shadowy silent distance: Reflections on Power

Exploring the year, the Titanic metaphor, and how we can hold power with humility.

Looking back at this year, the strongest impression I’m left with is power.
A world obsessed with power.

We have leaders referring to entire groups of people as “junk” — disposable, unwanted. It has been a year of painting with one brush: one truth, one side, my opinion, my truth.

Extreme positions everywhere.
Listening rare.
Curiosity almost nonexistent.

But can we be curious about a truth that strays far from my own?

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The Story of Power This Year

Power is not new, but this year the misuse of power felt especially blatant. More and more people seem able to look at a spade and call it a fork — not as an act of curiosity, but as an act of denial.

That’s not openness to another perspective.
That’s fixed positioning about something that actually has a reality to it.

A spade will always be a spade.
And yet even this kind of objective truth has been stretched beyond recognition.

Politicians in my own country seem less trustworthy than ever — clinging to positions, lying under oath, choosing power over truth. In the U.S., Sam Harris recently spoke about a US senator that tried to do the right thing and was punished for it. We don’t live in a cultural moment that rewards accountability or apology. We reward dominance.

Meanwhile, the world’s first trillionaire is celebrated not just for innovation but for sheer influence.

Truth — objective or subjective — feels increasingly absent from the table.

There were moments this year when I struggled to believe that we still call ourselves “humanity.” After centuries of empires rising and falling, technologies evolving, and wars repeating, we still haven’t learned how to collaborate.

It’s astonishing that a species so intelligent can also be so foolish.
Are we ever going to learn?
As a student of history, I remain doubtful.

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A Glimmer of Hope

And yet, amidst all this, there is extraordinary good.

Quiet good.
Steady good.
Human good.

I believe most people are fundamentally good. The problem is that a vocal minority often hijacks the narrative and turns the current against the broader stream of goodness.

Goodness isn’t perfection.
It’s simply being good enough.

But we are vulnerable — easily swayed by ideas that don’t serve the greater whole. And maybe what this moment calls for is simple:

Stand in your goodness.

We know what that feels like.
It’s grounding.
It’s contagious.

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The Titanic Lesson

My glimmer of hope this year is the Titanic — not the ship, but the lesson.

It was believed to be indestructible, unsinkable even by God. The hubris required to imagine such invincibility is staggering. And yet the image of the Titanic feels like the perfect metaphor for our current moment:

Tech companies racing toward AI dominance.
Nations racing toward supremacy.
Competitors racing to be first, fastest, biggest.

In all this striving, we imagine ourselves invincible.

And yet, as Thomas Hardy so perfectly captured:

And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

This gives me hope, not because the Titanic sank, but because it reminds us that no level of power is beyond the balancing forces of life.

Superintelligence, trillion-dollar empires, power-hungry tyrants — none of them exist outside the shadow that grows quietly and invisibly alongside power.

Life always humbles.
Always rebalances.

Even the most dominant African male lion eventually loses his reign. That loss of grip, that surrender to the cycle, is what a healthy relationship with power looks like.

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A Healthy Relationship to Power

I used to feel confused about power. Now, with some maturing, I see that we need a sense of inner power — the kind that helps us stand upright and do the hard things life asks of us.

Power used to uplift.
Power used for reciprocity.
Power used for the benefit of all.

Not power hoarded or weaponised.

This might sound like an oversimplification — of course we can’t please everyone — but we can hold power with humility, knowing that in the distance something will eventually reshape it.

We don’t need to fear losing power.
Because when one version of power falls away, another emerges.

There is always movement.
There is always response.
There is life in the system as long as we are breathing.

Life, like water, finds a way around.

Even when power tries to block the stream, life continues — adapting, flowing, persisting. The ice awaits the ship. The cycle awaits the lion.

Our task is not to be invincible.
Our task is to be human — empowered enough to do good, humble enough to know we are not in control of everything.

That is the hope I’m carrying forward:

Not that we will conquer power, but that we will learn to hold it lightly,
use it wisely, and remember that in shadowy silent distance,
Life is always waiting to teach us what we least want to learn but most need in order to grow — and, as Joseph Campbell reminds us, the hero almost always resists the path at first. What a ride. All we can do is take the next step with as much trust as we can muster, knowing that life keeps reshaping us in ways we can’t yet see.