Empowerment means different things to different people. If you’re unemployed, in a bad relationship, or have the funny feeling that you don’t know where you’re going in life, empowerment would mean doing anything to get unstuck or disentangle yourself from the self-limiting situation.
Until recently, I too looked at empowerment from the narrow understanding of getting out of the jam.
Having learnt storytelling and trying self-realization techniques, I now have a very different idea of empowerment.
It happened on a gloomy Monday morning. Just as I do now, I was seated before the system, furiously plucking at the keys and feeling satisfied that I’ve something to write. Swallowing a bunch of pills to stabilize blood sugar and ensure the heart isn’t clogged is good for health, but bad for writing. Because it makes you feel dull and hazy in the morning. All that you feel like doing is to get back into the bed and curl up for a catnap. Only that the catnap turns into something longer, a lot longer than you can afford.
So, as the pills began to work on my system and the typing slowed down, I asked myself if I was just pretending to be occupied, or was I doing something meaningful.
Yeah, come-on. I regularly write my blogs. Well, not clockwork precision, but something close to it.
It’s true that I’m writing, but how transformative are these posts? I write a lot more about my disability, telling my audience that it’s ok to have limitations but we should ensure limitations don’t limit us!
But the message is getting lost somewhere.
And it hit me like a bolt of thunder, almost throwing me out of my chair.
“What you don’t experience in full, you can’t explain even half,.”
I stopped typing and asked myself “What kind of a message is that?”
The answer came to me like the sunlight emerging from the blanket of cloud.
I might talk about my life experience, but who’s going to care? It’s like selling vanilla ice-creams in an era of double hot fudge, cocoa caramel or other unique varieties of Sundays. In fact, they don’t care for the vendor, unless it’s something they can experience themselves and feel enriched.
The stories we tell, albeit our own, should broaden people’s world view, comfort their torne hearts and fill them with hope that they can script their future…in stars. Because story is just a medium, feelings and hope are what we all are made of as human beings.
For that to happen, I needed to change the signboard hanging down my neck.
So far, the signboard said: “Look at me, I’m a good writer. I can give every writer a run for their money.” Of course, that’s the kind of belief every writer should possess.
But I realized on that dull Monday morning, peering at my mental screen through the drug-induced fog, that I should put up a very different signboard, the one that’s infinitely more welcoming and reassuring. The signboard should read: “Here’s how you can do.”
Bottom-line: if you empower yourself, you can tell people what exactly it means to empower themselves. That’s how we help each other; that’s how we build flourishing communities; that’s how we progress and make someone believe in the power of hope.
So, what’s your unique ice-cream fudge? Is it a double scoop?
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