I indulge myself a manikin smile when I hear someone going on about how much power they have. Or when I read one of those pervasive lists of “the most powerful people.”
Usually the folks making those lists hold consequential rank in politics or business. The top five on one included, in descending order, the presidents of China and the United States, the king of Saudi Arabia, the prime minister of Russia, and the pope.
No lightweights in that crowd. I’ve heard some who show up on these things every year can get mighty itchy if they slip a few slots. Oh dear.
Their fretting is farcical when we consider the tempest that blew across Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia late last month. Believe yourself all powerful? Can you level a town in seconds? Uproot trees and drop them miles away? No? Back of the line. All the power ties, power lunches and power trips pale in comparison to those powers greater than us.
The verity of man-made power is an illusion we hornswoggle ourselves with. The schoolyard bully only has as much power as we give him. The CEO of the worldwide corporation is only as important as today’s demand for what his company offers. Ever wonder what happened to the big cheese of Worldwide Acme Buggy Whips when the first Model T motored past?
Sit with someone who has been told their cancer cannot be treated and see if they mention the Most Powerful People in the World. See if the aforementioned top five world leaders combined can put back a town in the same number of seconds it took a tornado to flatten it and sweep it away like so much dust.
Last Wednesday, at the same time the storms were heading east, our daughter Amelia was coming home from the West, having wrapped up her final college semester at South Carolina. According to the weather radar she would make it home before the storms hit Sandy Springs, but that didn’t melt fear’s icicle stabbing me in the gut.
By the way, four years ago the first college that sent her a letter of acceptance was the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, an area that did feel the wrath of the storm.
I don’t rub shoulders with the rich and famous, but I have a few strings to pull. None of which would have done us any good that night. If the storm had picked up a little steam, being blood kin with the top five most powerful people wouldn’t have mattered a whit.
Power ties are pieces of cloth. Power lunches are overpriced meals. Power trips are one’s own timorousness placed on display for the world to see.
Of course, those who make the “most powerful” lists have real influence on our daily lives in some form or fashion. But with all veneration to presidents, prime ministers, potentates and popes — when the storms came through the Southeast almost two weeks ago, shredding lives and property, I’m dead-solid certain no one was praying to those people.
Jim Osterman lives in Sandy Springs. Reach him at jimosterman@rocketmail.com.
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