F1-JAS1
Potential Isn’t Power
Copyright © by Jessica Schneider, 5/1/04

  I recall my dad telling me once that the distinguisher between the young and the old came down to one word: energy. What was it and would we ever be able to see it? In physics, the word means nothing more than the capacity of a physical system to do work. And that physical system could be anything- a plant, a bird, a human, young or old. And how much we have is what really makes us. Picture it: early March and the small gardens are beginning to bloom from their little sticks of life. The petals are forming, the stems are pushing upward. And the old man is there, eighty years or so, walking among his garden, his plants, his newly found trees. He bends down to them, even though doing so tries his lungs. He must lift himself up to cough, and the wind is no help. He adores them, for he planted the seeds himself, and they too are puffing and poking upward to find his face, the young and the old- his nitrogen and carbon dioxide restores them. And it is there where they circle into one pattern, over and over again- circle into circle, the flowers and the man tending to one another.
  But energy is not the act of the physical system doing the work, but merely the capacity to do it. When we get old, we are no longer capable of doing the things we enjoyed when young. Climbing a tree, riding a horse, even a walk in the garden in the early March rain can be taxing. But power- that is something else entirely. The word deriving from Old French into Middle English: pooir, meaning to be able or have power. In physics, power is the rate at which work is done, expressed as the amount of work per unit time. The more that can be made in a shorter duration, the more powerful the thing that is doing the making is. But energy isn’t power. Kids have lots of energy, but don’t have any power to do what they want. Grown-ups have all the power to do what they want, without all the energy. It seems these words are co-dependent upon one another, yet seemingly contradicting. If energy is merely the capacity or the potential for power, energy itself means nothing unless it is acted upon. Had Mozart died at the age of five, such would have made him into no less of a genius than what he was at the age of thirty-five when he died. He would have still possessed the energy for greatness, but he would have been deprived from using it, and ultimately having it would not have mattered, because no one would have remembered him. Yes he had written compositions by the time he was five, but they were not very good yet. Not good enough to be remembered, anyway. But it is the memory of his work that lives in other people’s minds that reassures us of his greatness, and not of his potential, but of his accomplishment. Potential means nothing unless it is used for something. Sure, when a young person dies, it is the potential for what could have been that people often morn, rather than if the young person had been not young at all, but an adult who had not accomplished anything by society’s standards. For if that were the case, and this person had proven that all potential was lost, there would be nothing left to morn, (save for perhaps the few people who might have known that person). But accomplishment isn’t where the freedoms lie- it’s the recognition. No one cares about the potentially greatest basketball player who missed out on his chance with the NBA due to repeated injury. People only care about the accomplished player, the one who had the chance to prove his greatness and got recognized for it. After all, the former is only speculation, the what could have been, while the ladder is the actual- we have scores and game history to go by.
  But here is where the myth lies- that anyone with the willing potential, also holds the power for greatness. Not everyone with potential gets the chance to express it. That player who succumbed to injury, assuming by no fault of his own, was no less hard working, nor any less talented than the one who got the chance to show off his capabilities. How often have we heard the phrase, you just got to be at the right place at the right time? Is the cosmos just there, shifting its poles, deciding on what the next batch of good luck should fall upon? But here is where the idea can be stretched a little further: Accomplishment, in the true sense of the word, (and what does that mean?) means nothing. Mozart in his day was no less accomplished than he is now, more than two hundred years after his death. But in his day he was struggling to get by financially through both teaching and performing for small audiences. Only years later does it seem ludicrous that a composer of his caliber was not selling out his shows nightly. Why didn’t people want to flock to see them? Easy- he lived in Vienna, he performed in Vienna. Why would any local then want to go see someone who was always around, doing the same old thing? Why are American films more highly regarded in Europe than in its own country?
  Most of the time, artists are not appreciated in their lifetimes. Such has evolved into a cliché that seems to be true for most of the time. One might argue that the potential to produce great art could be referred to something as talent, or skill, but if those skills are not used and go ignored, they are as good as not having any at all. But then one might argue that the actual production an artist makes- great art, such as many of Picasso’s and Dali’s paintings, Hermann Hesse’s novels, Whitman’s poetry is accomplishment, because technically it is. They are all something. But isn’t every great art then, something? I think so, but most people wouldn’t. This thing for thing’s sake is not enough for the world to go on, and sure isn’t popular. Sure people might think art for art’s sake as a good thing, but that’s only because those few artists I mentioned are all famous. Whitman in his lifetime was hated by critics, lost his job at one point for having written Leaves of Grass, and died in near poverty. But now he’s regarded as the Father of Modern Poetry. Was he a failure in his lifetime but now a success only after his death? And it was his accomplishment that was admired by few, hated by many. So what is success, then? Is it the accomplishment, or the recognition of that accomplishment? Does power lay in the accomplishment itself, or the recognition of that accomplishment- i.e. that recognized person is now in a position to influence others. Success by society’s standards comes down to recognition, which is rewarded through money and fame, or in actuality, power. People now believe certain artists to be great because their fame reinforces it. And fame, at one time, was granted for having accomplished something. Only now, in the reality T.V. generation, it has evolved into something anyone can have. Just as anyone can have energy- we are energy. And just as with anything else, we have to know how to put it to good use, as well as it having to know how to put us to good use.
  These thoughts bounce back through my cranial hollows in the form of questions, answers, solutions, unanswered questions- all energy. What now do I wish to do with it? So now that I’ve dissected it- I’ve concluded that energy isn’t power, but the capacity or potential to produce it. And the capacity or potential means nothing if not acted upon or proven. And accomplishment isn’t power, for accomplishment without recognition is as good as nil. But what is power, then? Recognition for an accomplishment you had the potential to do? That’s what power is. Or rather, scratch that. It’s the recognition. Period. You don’t even really need to accomplish anything to get it- just know the right people and they’ll give it to you. Ask me though if I believe anything I’ve just said. Most people will say they believe accomplishment is something, but only when there is a system supporting it. A university to hide behind, the public’s recognition, a huge book deal- these are the easy things that claim accomplishment without actually knowing if any energy was there to begin with, or if it was used at all. Obviously, it was, some will say. But I say who really knows until one looks at the what, rather than the if. But all this could go on for days. Weeks, even, till every morning the old man walks to find his flock of flowers, tending to them and testing their mystery, repeatedly, circle after circle until finally one ceases, the cycle, and parades that energy into something finer.

[Excerpted from This I You]

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