powerful but slaved

A couple of days back, as I watched the live-action Aladdin movie, I found the irony that the Genie faces every day of his existence quite interesting. According to him, genies have ‘phenomenal cosmic power’ and are actually ‘all powerful’. However, this power comes at a price. They are bound to their respective lamps and slaves to the masters who summon them.

Isn’t this true for some of us too who live under the illusion that they are mighty, rich and powerful, yet in reality, they are living the life of a slave? We fulfill the wishes of our masters — our bosses or our clients — and end up doing the work that doesn’t align with us just so that we can earn a hefty paycheck and further carry on our illusion of being powerful and fulfill our material desires, buying the next shiny object. But having all the power within our grasp is not the answer; it’s a pursuit that never ends and usually leads us to misery and frustration, and our own downfall (look at Jafar’s fate).

Not all of us are corrupted by power, but still, we can’t ignore the fact that it comes at the cost of our freedom. It’s a highly personal choice that we need to make for ourselves, but what we need to truly understand is that we can let go of power and still live a life of abundance — our own abundance — and freedom, if we choose to live so.

While the Genie doesn’t have a choice to break the shackles of slavery and attain his freedom on his own, we humans do. Instead of continuing our pursuit of accumulating riches and gaining unparalleled power, we can simply choose to live a life of simplicity and work towards becoming a better human being. In this way, not only will we be able to break the vicious circle of slavery and gain our freedom back, but we’ll also be able to fulfill our truly desired wishes birthing from our heart, do work that aligns with us and make a significant contribution to this world.

When we set ourselves free, that’s when true magic happens, and that’s when we get the golden chance to work towards making our heartfelt wishes come true.

We can turn ourselves back to a human losing our facade and the air of false invincibility, and just be ourselves, living and embracing life as an ordinary person.

It may seem like we’ll be losing our magical abilities but it’ll be worth it, because we’ll finally get the opportunity to live life like we always wanted to, with absolute freedom and long-lasting joy.