Harry Potter's Pearls Of Wisdom
While preparing to travel overseas this week, I couldn't help but ponder both America's precarious role on the world stage and the aspects of the collective American psyche that have gotten us there.
As I reflected on this, a nugget of wisdom emerged from the strangest of places - a Harry Potter film showing on my flight. In the film, Harry is tortured by his own inner darkness. He struggles to grasp his psychic connection with the wicked Lord Voldemort as part of his coming of age into his full wizardly power.
"We've all got both light and dark inside of us," whispers Harry's godfather, Azkaban prison escapee and shadowy figure, Sirius Black. "What matters is the part we choose to act upon."
Like Harry, it seems that Americans, both individually and collectively, are being asked to reckon with the light and dark inside of us. We are growing as a nation from adolescence -- where youthful idealism co-exists side by side with self-centered cruelty -- into adulthood which could bring either wise stewardship or outright tyranny. It is ours to decide.
America is being tested in this coming of age. As we traverse the narrow passage from adolescence to adulthood, will we step from our impudent teenage ways into something more responsible and mature or something more derelict? In answering this question, we are being called to deepen our understanding of who we are, what we stand for, and which force of our collective psyche we choose to serve...the light or the dark.
I hope America's adulthood will not be about basking in our self-centered glory, remaining gluttonous and indulgent, and continuing to coerce those around us to serve our self-interest through force. I hope America's adulthood will be about wise and centered leadership, about fairness and liberty, and about principled use of power.
In the end, I believe, there is only one "force" that can illumine our future. Only one force that can counteract the ills perpetrated across our planet. Only one force, available without condition or scarcity, that can subvert even the most heinous of transgressions. That force is love.
However, there is both light and dark inside of us.
Fear is an opposite polarity of love, and fear pervades America's collective psyche. In the face of terrorism, nuclear threat, scarce energy resources, genocide and war, our natural response is to constrict in fear. Fear activates the lowest tendencies of habituated human behavior, allowing us to justify hostility, violence, hatred and greed. We have used fear to excuse our vicious teenage inclinations.
Lest you think me an impractical fool, waxing on about love in the face of grave danger, let me be clear. To choose love over fear does not mean demurring to protect oneself or avoiding direct action. But it does mean considering one's actions with great care, grounded in wisdom, integrity, clarity and authentic strength rather than in the reactive lower nature of fear.
The good news and the great paradox of fear, as with most polarities, is that fear can be a powerful servant of love. How? The power of our choice is often directly proportional to the difficulty of the choice. To choose love, in the face of such fear, is a terribly difficult commitment that carries immense power. Deep courage, energy, inspiration, and integrity are activated when we make a higher choice in the face of a difficult competing tension. It is a true test of our character. That's why when we contemplate inspired leaders throughout history - Churchill, Lincoln, Mandela, King - we feel the quickening of possibility, of truth, of something great. Their ability to affirm the higher choice in the face of countervailing tyranny defines their greatness.
It is time for us to choose greatness - to choose to act upon the light rather than the dark, to choose love instead of fear in our everyday lives.
I can hear the nay-sayers moaning that "acting from love" is a nebulous concept but, as a nation, we know how to do this. We've experienced it in the aftermath of 9/11, Katrina, and the recent Los Angeles and San Diego fires. These disasters created the condition for great compassion to flow forth. We all felt the unity and coherence of pulling for one another, where the field of connection was palpable and deeply touching. Many New Yorkers still recall with great awe the time after 9/11 when all of New York was pulling together as one, as if the entire city was connected through the heart.
It doesn't take a disaster to live like this. It is a choice.
With so many of us concerned about the state of the world, the state of our politics, the magnitude of our various foreign and domestic crises, what have we got to lose? Why not choose the light rather than the dark inside of us? Love is the only resource that is fully under our control, that has infinite supply, and that is such a powerful force that it has repeatedly changed the course of human history.
Rather than be part of an America doomed to a fearful darkness, choose right now to serve the other part of yourself. Rather than sit there paralyzed and polarized, do the only thing you can do: choose love.
As I reflected on this, a nugget of wisdom emerged from the strangest of places - a Harry Potter film showing on my flight. In the film, Harry is tortured by his own inner darkness. He struggles to grasp his psychic connection with the wicked Lord Voldemort as part of his coming of age into his full wizardly power.
"We've all got both light and dark inside of us," whispers Harry's godfather, Azkaban prison escapee and shadowy figure, Sirius Black. "What matters is the part we choose to act upon."
Like Harry, it seems that Americans, both individually and collectively, are being asked to reckon with the light and dark inside of us. We are growing as a nation from adolescence -- where youthful idealism co-exists side by side with self-centered cruelty -- into adulthood which could bring either wise stewardship or outright tyranny. It is ours to decide.
America is being tested in this coming of age. As we traverse the narrow passage from adolescence to adulthood, will we step from our impudent teenage ways into something more responsible and mature or something more derelict? In answering this question, we are being called to deepen our understanding of who we are, what we stand for, and which force of our collective psyche we choose to serve...the light or the dark.
I hope America's adulthood will not be about basking in our self-centered glory, remaining gluttonous and indulgent, and continuing to coerce those around us to serve our self-interest through force. I hope America's adulthood will be about wise and centered leadership, about fairness and liberty, and about principled use of power.
In the end, I believe, there is only one "force" that can illumine our future. Only one force that can counteract the ills perpetrated across our planet. Only one force, available without condition or scarcity, that can subvert even the most heinous of transgressions. That force is love.
However, there is both light and dark inside of us.
Fear is an opposite polarity of love, and fear pervades America's collective psyche. In the face of terrorism, nuclear threat, scarce energy resources, genocide and war, our natural response is to constrict in fear. Fear activates the lowest tendencies of habituated human behavior, allowing us to justify hostility, violence, hatred and greed. We have used fear to excuse our vicious teenage inclinations.
Lest you think me an impractical fool, waxing on about love in the face of grave danger, let me be clear. To choose love over fear does not mean demurring to protect oneself or avoiding direct action. But it does mean considering one's actions with great care, grounded in wisdom, integrity, clarity and authentic strength rather than in the reactive lower nature of fear.
The good news and the great paradox of fear, as with most polarities, is that fear can be a powerful servant of love. How? The power of our choice is often directly proportional to the difficulty of the choice. To choose love, in the face of such fear, is a terribly difficult commitment that carries immense power. Deep courage, energy, inspiration, and integrity are activated when we make a higher choice in the face of a difficult competing tension. It is a true test of our character. That's why when we contemplate inspired leaders throughout history - Churchill, Lincoln, Mandela, King - we feel the quickening of possibility, of truth, of something great. Their ability to affirm the higher choice in the face of countervailing tyranny defines their greatness.
It is time for us to choose greatness - to choose to act upon the light rather than the dark, to choose love instead of fear in our everyday lives.
I can hear the nay-sayers moaning that "acting from love" is a nebulous concept but, as a nation, we know how to do this. We've experienced it in the aftermath of 9/11, Katrina, and the recent Los Angeles and San Diego fires. These disasters created the condition for great compassion to flow forth. We all felt the unity and coherence of pulling for one another, where the field of connection was palpable and deeply touching. Many New Yorkers still recall with great awe the time after 9/11 when all of New York was pulling together as one, as if the entire city was connected through the heart.
It doesn't take a disaster to live like this. It is a choice.
With so many of us concerned about the state of the world, the state of our politics, the magnitude of our various foreign and domestic crises, what have we got to lose? Why not choose the light rather than the dark inside of us? Love is the only resource that is fully under our control, that has infinite supply, and that is such a powerful force that it has repeatedly changed the course of human history.
Rather than be part of an America doomed to a fearful darkness, choose right now to serve the other part of yourself. Rather than sit there paralyzed and polarized, do the only thing you can do: choose love.
posted by Stacey Lawson at
1:57 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home