The Last Word on Power by Tracy Goss

Author:Tracy Goss [Goss, Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7953-0838-3
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 1996-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

5. There is a commitment to take action.

When you take a stand, you make a commitment to move the declared possibility to a reality, regardless of the circumstances. This requires making a series of bold promises and fulfilling them. Without this commitment to act, the possibility you declared will never be transformed from a possibility to a reality, and it will go out of existence over time. (This is the focus of chapter 7.)

Declarations are deliberately purposeful. They are always made in relation to your commitment to provide what is missing for the declaration to become real. That is what gives them credibility. Offhand, casual, or whimsical declarations have no power, because they are not relevant. You don’t make declarations that seem to defy the laws of nature or physics, unless you are willing to do everything possible to test those laws. I could declare, “It is possible for me to balance Buicks on my pinkie,” but the declaration would be meaningless—even if it is theoretically true. I could declare it possible to fly from my rooftop in Texas to Ohio without benefit of a vehicle. This would be meaningless, too, unless I was willing (like the Wright Brothers) to devote everything I had to providing the missing elements. Perhaps someday, someone will invent a personal jet propulsion capsule, or some similar technology, for single-bodied human flight, but it will take the same total commitment that the Wright Brothers devoted to flying.

Both Rudy and Claude’s group are notable not just because they quickly moved into action, but because their commitment remained active over the course of years.

All five of these elements involve courage—a kind of existential courage where you must stand on your own, bringing forth yourself and the future from nothing. Standing on your own doesn’t necessarily mean standing alone or without support. It does mean standing on your own with nothing from the past or the present to prop you up. Taking a stand takes work, commitment, and discipline. But above all, taking a stand requires the courage to come from nothing into all of the forces resisting an impossible future.

Having taken a stand does not guarantee success. Don’t forget, you have already acknowledged that there is no such thing as a “right” or “wrong” future. The possibility of surprise and the lack of control do not lessen your commitment. They merely mean that you accept, as a gift, the reality that things work out the way they do. Taking a stand determines who you are being and what you are committing yourself to, while life is working out the way it does.

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