COMING ALONGSIDE

TAGS POWER CONTROL ARROGANCE.

The long sleek grey car drew up at the lights, beside the ‘little polo’, the guy at the wheel touched his horn, and was almost pushing the ‘polo’ in its lane so as to take more space.The young women at the wheel cowered in her seat, trying to focus on the light changing so as to pull away, and was relieved when she was able to drive off. The guy in the sleek car moved in behind her, dropped back, and continued to follow her.

I guess you are waiting for the drama to continue, but I’ll leave it to your imagination. I want to use the emerging story as a metaphor for our title of coming alongside. There are many people who genuinely care for others and naturally come alongside them when they need support, such people are natural befrienders and encouragers, and for the most part do not push in to a person’s live with a desire to demonstrate their imagined omnipotence.

However there are also those who practise the behaviour of the driver in the ‘sleek car’ who think they know how to solve everything, and do not consider or desire to learn how to come alongside with respect genuineness, and loving compassion. It is such behaviour that is taking away power rather than empowering the other.

Each person we meet in life is unique, and due to such uniqueness will respond to life in different ways to the other, and accordingly will grow and develop ways of coping with life that form a type of wisdom and can trigger ideas of how another might find the answer to their pressing issues.

So you see it is being present in an non-intrusive way that supports and opens up avenues of service to others that may have more lasting results than roaring along in our big car blowing the horn, and demanding notice.

Power is a marvellous entity, but the misuse of power, which we can see all around us in our world today is a dangerous and cursed thing. It smacks of slavery. People who need to abuse others whether consciously or unconsciously are out of control, and seek to control others for their benefit.

The rotten thing about all this is that when we do not know ourselves and balance ourselves accordingly being able to give and step back to help another becomes blurred and one gets mixed up in the other and the interactions become damaging rather than helpful.

Many who seek to help love to give advice, which essentially, or very often has the effect of mixing up, or even removing the individuals choice and is therefore consciously or unconsciously a desire to control the individual. The large car pushes the smaller one almost saying, I’m big and powerful and know how to move, while you are too small and are likely to break down, The truth is that each of them, without a decent service and ongoing maintenance is going to break down at some point.

Advice. should only be given when physical and or mental capacities are challenged and direct interventions are required. However in various life situations we meet the arrogant over bearing behaviours of others, they try to ‘jack themselves up’ by being condescending, smiling at nothing, talking over others and smirking behind our backs, Arrogance , however, is often, a mask for under confidence, even rage at having being ‘put down’ in times past, and there may be a desire to return the favour by giving them a taste of their own medicine. In an ordinary situation arrogance is just understood by it’s dictionary definition and so rather than challenging negativity and misuse of power it extends it.

Let’s come alongside with humility sharing, or making available our experience like a store house of choice, whilst acknowledging that our experience is not necessarily the same we have been in similar situations and have a ‘kinship’ with the other.