Which is greater in the human heart: power or love?

If you were born with it, power (meaning access and privilege) may not excite your taste buds. You’ve been living with it your whole life and basking in its benefits. You are accustomed to the finer things, servants, respect. Power is as natural to you as breathing. That beautiful, one-of-a-kind painting hanging on your wall may inspire awe in others, but relative indifference in you. Power for you is a well-balanced meal on fancy tablecloths you hardly ever notice.

But when you taste love, you see in color for the first time. Love charges all of your senses and makes them live wires. The world makes sense. All darkness is chased into shadows. Love becomes your obsession. You’d give anything to keep it and no one can talk you out of it.

It is not true for all, but it may be true for you–the choice you must make. The cost of love may be astronomical. Choosing it could strip you of all you’ve been accustomed to: power. Of course, at the time the price won’t seem so high. You’ve never appreciated power to begin with. It was something you took for granted, didn’t know it’s value. Didn’t really understand what you had.

That is until it’s gone. Now the question is: Does love endure after you forfeited your power? Now that you know what you gave up? I hope love is enough for you while living in your new normal.

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But if you were born without it, power is something you crave–either consciously or subconsciously. Being a tail is all you know and survival is your meal plan. Many a boot you’ve had to kiss only to have them shoved in your face. Life is hard and it’s not fair, nor is it just. You know the difference between the two because you live on the bottom. Fair deals with equality. Just deals with what’s right. Neither have you experienced.

Your life is a colorless tale, but you may have been fortunate enough to feast on love. It is the life coursing through your veins. When you have love, a meager meal can be enough, and a vision can live on. Love will keep you fighting when your world looks like a neglected tomb.

But beware should the day ever comes when you are exalted and the doors that were once closed to you open, when people are now respecting and serving you. The effect is intoxicating…and addictive. The tape won’t confirm it, but you’re certain you’ve grown inches taller. The view is different from the top.

Love demands your attention, but you’re preoccupied with other things. Things like power and all its benefits. Love reminds you of tales you’d rather forget, and in your heart you neglect love and it fades into the background. Love, however, won’t remain silent, nor is it content to live in the shadows. Choose, it demands. You have power so you believe you can choose both, but love tells you that the space in your heart can’t accommodate both.

The ultimatum enrages you…and wounds you. Love doesn’t seem much like love if it demands so much. It remembers the past just like you, but not the same way. It believes you were a winner because you had it. You believe you were a loser because it’s all you had. Love wants to go back to the way things were, but you will never pucker up to kiss a boot ever again. You may have to settle for a new kind of love. A kind that appreciates you with power. A kind of love that understands its place.

Some things are not missed until it’s gone. It takes a while, but you find out that new kind of love doesn’t quite pan out. And although you still desire power, you realize it cannot fill the void made when love left.

So which is greater in your heart: power or love?

The one you choose, of course. But neither is without its price.

D.L. Lunsford