Carrots avoid cancer and other tales of power

Radha was 2 when she first heard from her mother that a carrot a day kept cancer away. Of course, her mother started telling her that even before she could chew one, and nothing stopped her from topping up the cerelac mash with carrots then. Soon it was Radha's first lesson of life. She grew to love the taste anyway. As she grew,  she was shocked to hear that it couldn't be true at many occasions during multiple phases of her life - at 6 when she asked her classmates how come they don't eat as much carrot, at 10 when junior science classes took a turn for the worse, and far more frequently between 11 and 18 when the world was opened up to her in so many ways.

She soon started to debate as to whether she should tell her own child the same thing i.e. a carrot a day keeps cancer away when she was discussing family life ideas with her fiancee - exactly where her mother was at the start of the story.

2-25, how the tables turned. Surprisingly, her dilemma isn't far from almost everyone else's and isn't unlike most people's. Confused? Let me explain.

Radha is you.

Her mother is every person who holds incredible unchecked authority that you've felt at every stage of your life - priest, policeman, parent, Government, teacher, for starters.

A carrot a day keeps the doctor away is everything they've ever been a route for you to know, believe and assume without question.

Everything you assume to be true about anything has been perpetuated by this group of people before you could reason - just like Radha when she was 2. When you started to reason at some point, they were embedded so deep that you had to literally weed out the worst among them - if you were lucky enough to be self-aware - just like Radha when she was as she went from 6 to 10 to 18. If you didn't, you were doomed to repeat the cycle.

Say hello to 'innocent power': patterns that churn because we fail to question them and they set in too deep for us to uproot them. Soon we don't know who made the rules but, apparently, imminent order depends on them being enforced. All these people enforcing them are not bad, nor did they have bad intentions. They had just become the cycle without realising it. Radha had the time and mind to question it. They didn't.

The memo that didn't go out is that people play roles and when they do they have the sudden authority which can be used to make them better - just like when Radha was debating whether to teach her child that a carrot a day keeps cancer away. It was in her power to stop the misinformation from taking further root and no one would question her. Even if they did,  she was accorded all the rights to do it the instant she took on a role as a mother from being just a child of a parent before - just like her own mother before her, and her mother before her and so on.

So much of the whats and whys of our everyday living is driven by this power that decides to go with what was because we don't have the courage to change it to what can be better. The bright side is that everyone gets a turn at it. The power transfers is as we go a level up. 

Ironically the route of the POWER transfer is through PAR. 

We move from being mere PERSONS

to becoming AUTHORITIES

to eventual RETIRING with some pull

Every teacher was once a student, who can take all the negatives about their experience and how the classroom can transform their own students.

Every policeman was once an ordinary civilian who can intentionally avoid imposing all the harassment they faced from cops before on civilians.

Every priest was once a lay worshipper who can make the process of religious and community involvement more transparent and uplifting and less authoritative.

Every chief minister was once a regular citizen who can avoid the bad governance principles that they had to face before.

Now, they all can do all this with full authority.

They all grow to senior or elderly positions - grandparents, religious or education mentors or leaders, heads of organizations - holding a good amount of overall influence which can be used for better change.

You move from one to the next. In a single moment, you suddenly have the authority to right the wrongs of your time that you suffered one without being questioned. With a snap of your finger and decisive conviction, you can earn that right by stopping the cycle and pre-editing all of the things that make the world a worse off place. 

This is our superpower in a Marvel and DC age when we idolize super powers that are super unrealistic. We ignore the ones that come along everyday. You don't need spider webs shooting from your arms or even vibranium.

Change for the better is you. Be like Radha and stop the cycle of telling people a carrot day keeps cancer away, or any other thing that's humbug in any form, because your time on earth deserves better!

If you wait long enough, all it takes is one single swoop to get closer to paradise, if you realise the hack and if you have the will to actually turn a long lost dream into an instant reality - which is a superpower we fail to use. That's what people should mean when they say "be the change".