There are phrases that sound poetic until you realise they were meant to be instructions for survival. This one did not come to me as inspiration. It came like an accusation. Like a reminder that the world has always known the answer and still continues choosing the opposite. We live in a time where power is worshipped like currency and tenderness is treated like a liability. People do not fear cruelty anymore. They fear vulnerability. They fear being the one who cares more.
It is strange, isn’t it, how we have built entire systems on the belief that dominance is strength and gentleness is weakness, when history keeps proving the opposite. Empires fall. Egos crack. Violence repeats itself with boring reliability. But love, the quiet kind that does not demand applause, outlives everything. It rebuilds what power destroys. It softens what cruelty calcifies. Yet somehow it is always the last option instead of the first.
Maybe the real tragedy is not that the world is broken, but that it refuses to believe softness could fix anything. We confuse control with safety and hierarchy with order. We pretend that winning is the point when most victories feel like loss the moment the noise fades. The love of power has never created anything worth keeping. But the power of love has created every beautiful thing we have ever cherished.
This is not a romantic sentiment. It is a warning.
If we continue choosing domination over compassion, we will survive, but we will not live.
So here is a reminder for a world that keeps forgetting.
When power enters the room, love is the first thing to leave.
Power has a way of changing the air. You can feel it even before anything is said. Shoulders stiffen. Voices shrink. People start choosing their words carefully, not because they respect the person in front of them, but because they fear them. Power demands obedience. Love asks for presence. One controls the room. The other fills it.
The love of power is addictive because it is instant. It gives the illusion of certainty. People listen to you. People move for you. People fear disappointing you. But fear is not loyalty. It is silence wearing a polite face. And sooner or later, silence becomes resentment.
What nobody tells you is that the love of power is lonely. The higher you climb, the fewer people remain who can speak to you honestly. Affection becomes performance. Relationships become transactions. You no longer know who cares and who benefits. Power does not rot suddenly. It rots slowly, the way fruit looks perfect on the outside long after the inside has collapsed.
The power of love works differently. It does not enter loudly. It is not immediate. It does not demand anything. But it builds something power never can. Trust. Safety. Softness that does not disappear when someone else walks into the room. Love does not need control to feel secure. It simply exists without threat.
Power can make people listen.
Only love can make them stay.
The love of power creates winners who feel like losers.
We live in a world obsessed with winning. But nobody warns you about the emptiness that comes after you finally get everything you thought you wanted. The promotion. The validation. The title. The authority. And then what. You look around and realise you have climbed a mountain only to find the view is lonely and the air is thin.
The love of power convinces you that success is proof of worth. But worthiness cannot be earned through dominance. It can only be experienced through connection. People spend entire lives chasing importance, only to discover that significance means nothing if no one feels safe enough to sit beside you.
Power feeds the ego but starves the heart. It teaches you to measure your value through comparison instead of compassion. You stop asking whether you are happy and start asking whether you are ahead. And when your whole identity depends on staying above others, even rest starts to feel like failure.
The power of love does not require winning. It requires presence. It does not care whether you are impressive. It cares whether you are kind. It does not demand that you stand above anyone. It asks whether you can stand with them.
You do not need to conquer the world to matter.
You just need to stop fighting one.
Love does not make us weak, it makes us human.
Somewhere along the way, we became embarrassed of tenderness. We apologise for caring. We hide affection behind sarcasm. We treat vulnerability like confession. But love has never been weakness. It is the only thing strong enough to challenge cruelty without becoming it.
The love of power is easy. Anyone can dominate. Anyone can destroy. Anyone can make themselves feel big by making someone else feel small. But to remain soft in a world that benefits from hardness requires courage no empire has ever possessed.
Love is not passive. It is not fragile. It is the only force that does not vanish when confronted. Violence escalates. Power shifts. Fear spreads. But love remains. It rebuilds where power collapses. It stays when the noise dies. It heals what ego refuses to touch.
If the world does not change, it will not be because love failed.
It will be because we were too afraid to believe it was stronger.
The world does not need more powerful people, it needs gentler ones.
History remembers conquerors, but it survives because of caretakers. Because someone chose empathy over ego. Because someone believed connection was worth more than control. The love of power builds monuments that eventually crumble. The power of love builds homes inside people that last long after names are forgotten.
So here is the simplest truth we keep avoiding.
Power can change the world.
But only love can save it.
Choose the one that leaves something standing.
If this made your chest go quiet for a second, good. It means you haven’t let the world harden you beyond recognition. It means softness still lives somewhere under all the armour you thought you needed.
And if you want more reminders that gentleness is not a liability, more essays that pry your heart open and stitch it back together, and more words that dare to choose humanity over spectacle, stay with Her Campus at MUJ.
This is Niamat Dhillon at HCMUJ, signing off with one last whisper: Power might get you through the world, but love is what makes it worth moving through at all.