It is said, “the pen is mightier than the sword.”  I do question that.  In my mind it depends what the pen is writing.  There are times when the pen plays into the hands of the sword. What made something big in the first place is replaced with pulling down its foundations.
Right now I see a power play going on.  All have something in common.
It really does seem to me that the way of power is to ensure those close to a person have all they need.  If those close who wield power are content and satisfied it matters less what the vast majority feel and experience.  The strong rule by ensuring they have the strong close and satisfied.
I am concerned in the long term for those that exalt themselves.  For those that want others to perceive them as major players due to their own strength.  There is no doubt in my mind that they can cause a heap of damage and cause a multitude of misery while playing their game.  That sort of thing may go on while the status quo is maintained.  Yet it is the unexpected that brings undone.
It seems so much is the exact opposite of what is stated as a truism.  When I look at the power of others I do so in the light of what would be right for me to do.
I am a great believer in power being seen as an inverted triangle.  Traditionally power is drawn as a triangle with the powerful at the top - most removed from the ones they serve.  To me power needs to be represented by a triangle with the top at the bottom closest to those they serve.
And serve to me is a key word.  I heard of one person who had a vast complex employing hundreds.  He tried to wield power by ripping his workers off and not paying them a fair days wage for a fair days work.  Employees left in droves.  Eventually he made wages good and desirable, and people flocked to be employed by him.  The way he did it changed society for the better
The power I like of this world, and the power I follow, is power built on the recognition of its own fallibility and finiteness.
Power to me is right and necessary but it can easily be corrupted if not handled with care.

A guy grew up in Victorian England wanting to be a writer.  But his circumstances were totally against him.  His dad was in prison for not paying his debts.  He got a job putting labels on bottles.  He submitted multiple manuscripts which he sent out in the dead of night so no one would laugh at him.  They were rejected time and again.  Finally one was accepted and the editor praised him for his writing.  That compliment meant the world to him.  He walked the streets with tears in his eyes.  So began the career of Charles Dickens.
I wrote recently about Edison and how Henry Ford encouraged him in what he was doing, and it made a huge difference to him.  He was encouraged.
Encourage to me is an interesting word.  It contains “courage.”  I like that.  The willingness to take a risk.  To do something others may not have thought of, or that others regard as impossible.
Sometimes my dreams require courage.  Dickens was one of eight kids.  So often it is a word spoken in the right way at the right time that keeps a person dreaming.
It seems to me I see enough of pulling down.  Enough of saying “you can’t.”  Yet it is the one who says, “you can” that lifts.  It is the one who believes in another despite negative circumstances or the anonymity of the person.
Time and again I have heard of others lifted beyond bad circumstances and a lack of positive expectation to achieve good things.  Sometimes it is just achieving a happy family life when the past and all around is littered with failures.
I guess it is one of my things.  I totally believe others criticizing continually does not help.   What is seen, and needing to be dealt with, may be true but as they say honey achieves way more than the stick.
I know my failures and shortcomings.  Others reminding me of them do not help.  I achieve way more when others accentuate the positive and encourage me.  In those circumstances I want to go for the good.  A little bit of encouragement for all goes a long way and has even helped to unearth one of the greatest writers of all time.

Alfred to me was notable in one particular way.  The waiting.  It had a devastating impact in some areas but here it had scary moments for sure, but apart from high winds at two particular times, it was the waiting I found hard.  One day we were all prepared to unpack all that had been packed up in readiness, only to experience the worst night of the event that night.
The event was bad enough, but it was the waiting I found hardest.
I thought of that because I looked up the meaning of the phrase “in the meantime” today.    The meaning I found was “IN THE MEANTIME is during the time before something happens.”  I found that Dictionary.com described what I was thinking about. “The phrase in the meantime goes back to as early as 1340 and is based on meantime (“an intervening time“), also first attested in the 1300s. The mean in meantime is “average,” from a French and Latin root for “middle,” making meantime literally a kind of “in-between time.”
What I have found and hear more and more people attesting to, meantimes seem to be getting shorter and shorter.  Never have I felt so acutely the sense of “what’s next” after an event.
In many ways that is by the by and simply an observation of the times in which I find myself.  In a very real way, it is the “meantime” I find hardest.  In the meantime I am most likely to goof off.
For some reason I thought of lions in Africa.  Hunger drives them to action.  When not hungry they rest and do what lions do.  Eventually though a feed becomes paramount.  All activities are necessary and good, but for a lion there is nothing like hunger to motivate.
It really is the same for me.  When I am not hungry (not talking in a physical sense) I cruise.  And the thing is I reckon it is similar for us as it is for lions.  Satisfied hunger satisfies only until the next bout of hunger.
I have found myself wishing that eating heaps set me up to not need to eat again for longer periods.  But alas before long I am hungry again.
To me hunger is good (not talking the body needing food).  Hunger motivates.  It is when hunger is sated I am most inclined to cruise into oblivion.
So for sure I do not enjoy adverse events but it is in those times I grow stronger.  “Meantimes” are preparation times.  I continually draw on a source that provides all I need when I need it.  As someone I know used to say, “I am satisfied with an unsatisfied satisfaction.”