The power of possession: the act of telling someone else that they can't have it. Yeah.....
Or, quite the opposite: the sense of powerlessness we feel when someone claims ownership of us (a boyfriend or girlfriend, a friend who starts calling you "li'l bro"), the powerlessness we feel as we hand over our pennies and bread the to the government and cable companies, the powerlessness we feel toward a rapidly approaching 99 chemistry problem set and 10 minute long English presentation and poster exposition on your experiment that failed to yield any workable results all due on the same day.
But the main thing about possessiveness and the power it gives us is that it is also possessive and takes power over us. Possessiveness can quickly become obsession (like when Hitler first wanted Germany, then Poland, then the whole Eastern Block?) and then it can block out the rest of your mind that's like, "Woah. Woah. Are you sure this is such a good idea? C'mon. Give the other people a tur- No? Really? Are you sure?".
And here's where I get to my main point: how do we, as individuals, know where the line is between possessiveness and obsessiveness? And where is the line drawn between inclusion and greed? Where is line between wanting to give everything you have to what you love and taking what you think you deserve from what you think loves you? These fundamental rights and wrongs are separated by miles and miles of gray haze, so how the hell are we supposed to know when we've crossed to the wrong half of the gray area? And of course you can't just backtrack and say, "Well, hey there. Didn't mean to stumble into the Great Convention of Evil, I just took a right at the elephant tusks, a left at the McDonald's soda fountain, and went straight through the Gulf of Mexico. It seems that somewhere in between, I must have gotten lost. Don't mind me. I didn't actually mean any of it."
So, yeah, while it's easy to get lost, we have to rely on each other, on humanity, to point us in the right moral direction. So if you personally don't act on your moral compass, if you don't personally try to help your fellow humans, gay and straight and black and red and yellow and white and male and female and curly-haired and straight-haired and tattooed and Christian and Buddhist and Hindu and everything else that I missed, try to attain a better standing in there lives, if you don't personally make it your daily duty to tell someone you love them and think that they are worth something, well then who in hell do you think will?
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