Is it holding a gun in your fist?

Is it wearing a mask and spray painting a slogan on a bank building?

Is it destroying a police cruiser?

Is it a sense of being, of awareness you can only get through expressing your outrage and despair through violent means?  

That is the message I seem to be getting.  People needing to feel empowered because they have despaired of change, because their nation is failing, the planet is dying, they are an "oppressed class" or whatever.

I say if you must seek empowerment you have failed yourself.

Every person is soveriegn, and from that realization that all power in society flows from you, the individual, that you are the equal to any other, then you are empowered.

Sometimes it seems impossible to effect change, the battle too hard, the mountain too steep, the forces arrayed against you too powerful.  

Wrong.

Life and reality is what you make of it.

It may take a lifetime, but if the end result is worth it, why not?  Got anything better to do with your brief flash of time on this earth?

Those who fight a good fight and still loose are still honored.  Those who never fight because they fear losing are despised.  I argue those who never fight are the true danger.  Those who need artificial courage instilled in them.  Those are the people who listen to whatever Pied Piper comes along playing the right tune.

I decided sometime ago that if things were really as bad as some would have me to believe, that I could not stop the glacial advance of doom.  With that in mind, I decided that I may as well enjoy the ride.  I am ready for what may come may way.  Prosperity and poverty, failure and success, revolution or anarchy.  Come what may, I welcome it, for I am soveriegn and am willing to exercise that power as I see fit.

We are all empowered at birth.  Some just let it slip away and spend the rest of their lives seeking superficial empowerment.

I want to leave you with a song by George Harrison I dearly love.  It's great music to sail to.

I don't know if it has anything to do with empowerment, but I think there is a message there.  

Oh I've been traveling on a boat and a plane
In a car on a bike with a bus and a train
Traveling there and traveling here
Everywhere in every gear

But oh Lord we pay the price with the
Spin of a wheel - with the roll of the dice
Ah yeah you pay your fare
And if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there

And I've been traveling through the dirt and the grime
From the past to the future through the space and the time
Traveling deep beneath the waves - in
watery grottoes and mountainous caves

But oh Lord we've got to fight
With the thoughts in the head with the dark and the light
No use to stop and stare
And if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there

You may not known where you came from
May not know who you are
May not have even wondered how
you got this far

I've been traveling on a wing and a prayer
By the skin of my teeth by the breadth of a hair
Traveling where the four winds blow
With the sun on my face - in the ice
and the snow

But oooeeee it's a game
Sometimes you're cool, sometimes
you're lame
Ah yeah it's somewhere
And if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there

But oh Lord we pay the price
With the spin of the wheel with the roll of
the dice
Ah yeah, you pay your fare
And if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there

I keep traveling around the bend
There was no beginning, there is no end
It wasn't born and never dies
There are no edges, there is no size
Oh yeah, you just don't win
It's so far out - the way out is in
Bow to God and call him Sir
But if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there

But if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there

Any Road -George Harrison off the album of the same name.