The Power of Will
We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.
~William Ewart Gladstone~
Thy will be done. The will of the people. Last will and testament. Will is an important concept running through our religion, politics and final bequests. I wonder how many of us have ever stopped to ponder its power and meaning. I know I haven’t until recently.
To my mind will is a mental force of determination. Sometimes it refers to what we think God wants us to do. Sometimes it refers to our collective beliefs as a nation and sometimes it refers to what we as individuals want to have happen. Of course there are many other meanings as well.
These wills do not always coexist peacefully. Religious texts and government documents sometimes conflict in their expectations of how we should act. Sometimes our desires as individuals lie in direct conflict with religious or government expectations.
Without trying to resolve the problems of the universe in a single article, I would like to address individual will which can be consistent or volatile. The dictionary defines volatile as “lively, changing quickly or easily from one mood or interest to another.”
Sometimes what we want remains fairly consistent. We can be very determined when our basic needs or wants are threatened. Our will can also be volatile depending on the situation and context. We can be at peace when our wishes coincide with the wishes of those around us. We can become irate when others contradict our wishes. A third possibility is being at war with ourselves when we try to honor conflicting internal values.
Where does our will originate? Sometimes we want what our parents wanted. Sometimes we want the opposite. Sometimes our experiences forge our will. A person raised in poverty might do anything to avoid re-experiencing it. A person raised without love might sacrifice everything else to feel loved. A person with treasured possessions might fight to the death to protect them.
Our greatest challenge may be how to balance our wills with those of the people around us. In my experience, it is not possible for us to have everything we want and at the same time allow others to have whatever they want. Our needs will at least occasionally clash, sometimes to the core of our beings.
So what should we do? I think the keys are cooperation and compromise. First we must understand what other people want. Sometimes what sounds like a conflict might be just a matter of semantics. We might both want the same thing but express it in different words.
The other part is compromise. Knowing we can’t have everything we want if others are also to have their way, we need to determine what we hold most dear and understand the same about other people. Then we can find a way to negotiate ways for everyone to have at least part of what they want.
Action Steps
- List your most important values.
- List the values of those with whom you are in conflict.
- If you don’t know what is important to them, ask.
- Decide which of your values are negotiable.
- Negotiate.