By Mark Antony Rossi

Imagine a world where competition didn’t involve various parties with a superiority complex. The best person could claim victory and decide not to gloat about it for a century. The winner declared winner but the losers not deemed failures. This is lesson one of the importance of not feeling important.

For some strange reason people lose perspective when given a title. The nice guy you knew last week becomes an isolated freak dispensing edicts to an office full of worker ants. It’s a curious thing to see authority misused and notice people running for the hills.

Should this dramatic mess be chalked up to inexperience or is there a deeper meaning to normal people crossing over into the abnormal moments after they receive a measure of power.  I’ve seen enough to rule out inexperience since poor management skills doesn’t suddenly turn you into a tyrant.

I doubt power is the culprit and laugh at simple-minded assertions casting power as a magical force that makes one do bad things. Humans are individuals with the responsibility to choose. Power is no different than a tool or a weapon. Its context (help or hurt) determines the ethical result. Nothing more. Nothing mysterious.

What should strike our curiosity is the passionate pursuit of power by those who, often, have an agenda of pain and punishment with anyone in their path. Something broken deep in the psyche lets loose a leviathan ravenous and raging against an unsuspecting world.

The importance of not feeling important is not a clarion call to wield power with humility. Nor is it an examination on curtailing ego. It is about knowing yourself well enough to resist the darker side of title, power and ceremony and still act in the best interests of the common good.

Only by rejecting the straitjacket of importance can an ethical man manage to make a healthy difference in the world at large. When we lose sight of those we love — the mirror begins to play havoc with our soul. The voice of reason is crowded out by songs of self as importance burns bridges until all that is left is a lonely island unconnected to the surrounding community.

The importance of not feeling important is an open secret to building trust and belonging to something bigger than yourself. The day has come again when a handshake and an honest word can carry the weight of a million worrywarts too afraid of making a friend.

About the Author: Mark Antony Rossi is a poet, playwright and author of the bioethics volume “Dark Tech” now available from Amazon. His most recent plays have been produced in Liverpool and New York.

http://ethical-stranger.webnode.com/ 

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