What Does It Mean To Have Authority?

What is your realm of authority? Or, what is your realm of influence? What I know from my own experience is that the most random people influence my thoughts, decisions and sometimes even my own view of myself and I often allow the views of others to hold too much authority in my life.

This can get complicated thinking about the fact that what we perceive about others is still a matter of our own interpretation. In a very real sense, it can be hard to get outside of our own heads. 

The word influence means the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself. To me, influence and authority go hand-in-hand. To have influence, it seems that some authority must be granted.

Some of us need to be aware of our influence. It is a fact that if you have children, that you will influence them. To ignore this is irresponsible and can lead to poor outcomes in the future. Same goes for anyone who finds themselves in a position of power or authority. In my life these people have been my parents, my parents’ friends, teachers, pastors, professors, bosses and mentors. 

Let’s Talk About It When You’re Done

We have phrases in our culture such as, “practice what you preach,” or “put your money where your mouth is,” “don’t hesitate,” and others that have similar meanings. It seems that we have a sense that talking about doing something is not the same thing as actually doing it. I also have the intuition that it is better to learn from someone who actually does the things they talk about rather than learning from someone who only talks about doing them. 

I experienced this in college all the time. In my photography and design classes, there was a huge difference between the professors who only taught their subject and those who both taught the subject and were seasoned professionals in their chosen field. 

In philosophy, I had professors and peers who would discuss ideas and their implications and leave it at that - a discussion. Those whom I actually could learn from were those who committed themselves to their beliefs and accepted the implications as consequences, not simply possibilities in a philosophical thought experiment. I didn’t always agree with their beliefs, but there is always something to learn from those who commit themselves to their beliefs.

Those with commitment to their own beliefs create a certain resonance in the world - a cosmic rhythm if you will.

I’ve been guilty of being the wishy-washy thinker. The person who believes one thing, but because I recognize the validity of the perspective of others, I’ve been hesitant to fully commit to my own views. I’ve identified that this stems from a place of being afraid to be wrong as well as being afraid to offend others, which led to a life that was being built for the approval of others.

Committing To Yourself Means Committing To Your Beliefs

Influence goes two ways. I use social media, this blog and other parts of my website to market my photography, my podcast and other aspects of my business. Marketing requires speaking specifically about a certain thing to specific people. In many ways, this has forced me to fully commit to some of my beliefs because when you try to speak to everyone, you end up speaking to no one. 

I’ve had to let go of the fear of offending people because no matter what you believe, those beliefs will be offensive to those who are offended by them. I’ve also had to let go of the fear of being wrong about what I believe, because life is more forgiving than people are. Being wrong is one of the best ways to learn. 

I’ve said some pretty offensive things in my life. I’ve been wrong and put in my place by those who are right. And, every time this has happened I’ve been faced with a choice to either protect the version of myself in the moment, to act out of a sense of self-righteousness and pride; or to revise my views about reality, admit that I was wrong and move on having gained something. This isn’t always clear and may take some careful navigating and guidance, but it often comes down to that very choice: seek to preserve a version of yourself, or seek to understand truth.

Influence Is As Natural As Breathing

I’m sitting on the bank of the Sandy River while I write this blog and I see the way that the water carves the landscape. I can see the way in which the water has created the most efficient path for its own flow. This means that parts of the landscape that once were there, no longer are. This means that the  large, smooth boulders 50 yards down river from me were once rough and gnarled. 

Something has been taken away from these rocks: they have changed, they are different. Different water even passes over these rocks, perhaps water that has never seen this river and these rocks until now. Yet, the flow remains. 

What the river does not do is worry about the rocks. The river does not worry about the landscape. The river simply flows. Change occurs, and time passes. 

There may be a lot that is involved in our lives. There may be a lot of different elements and characters who interact with us along the way. The river has no say as to what will stand in its way - once it was these large rocks that are now smooth and made part of the river, now it may be a fallen tree, the earth from a landslide, or something else entirely.

In this way we cannot control those who are in our lives, yet our goal must remain the same: to explore our journey to our destination. There may be some things that present themselves that slow our progress or even divert our flow. 

However, we have the power to pool ourselves, to gather ourselves up and persist. This may be slow at first, but over time, we will not just wear down our obstacles, but we will take the parts that we may with us and deposit them further down the river. We can make our obstacles apart of ourselves and begin to live in the freedom that comes from understanding ourselves in the proper context to our environment and those who are in our lives. 

I don’t know what the ideal river would look like. I’ve seen paintings of imagined landscapes, and I’ve sat and looked at the ones around me. I’m not sure that a painter would imagine the small imperfections, the inlets and outlets, the fallen trees amongst the growth, the dead patches within the green fields, or even the decay of dead and dying plants and animals. 

Real life is a full pallet and is often unpredictable. However, I have never found this to ever take away from the very real beauty that is to be found. What I used to imagine as perfection lacked any sense of diversity, nuance and detail: the real stuff, the nitty gritty. All of the small things that make life an exploration rather than an attempt at imitation.

Influence is as natural as breathing. We influence what is around us, and what is around us influences us. At the same time, there are those who wish us to believe certain things in certain ways that simply do not align with our flow.

Not all truth belongs to all things: some truth is only true in certain contexts. So, as we commit to what we see and believe and as we learn to trust our own intuitions, we must commit to ourselves and to those around us to stand true, to adapt, to continue, to flow and to revise whenever we find that revision is our truth.

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NATE STEVENS PHOTOGRAPHY

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