> Or perhaps a different lesson is that if you want a better world to exist, choose to live it. Sometimes there will be those which do not share this vision and actively work against your choice.

So you need the power to abide by your choices and not others'. I think the colloquial understanding of "power" is somewhat different than I want to convey. Power is potential, the ability to affect or effect, control[0]. Violence can be powerful, because a dead foe can't hurt you. Nonviolence can be powerful, because a dissuaded foe can't hurt you. Who you are determines what you do. What you do reflects who you are. The path you are walking on, whether to your design or not, requires power to prevent straying.

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/power

> Power is potential, the ability to affect or effect, control[0]. Violence can be powerful, because a dead foe can't hurt you. Nonviolence can be powerful, because a dissuaded foe can't hurt you.

I was going more for the "be the change you want" perspective than what perceived power can accomplish. Ultimately, power is an illusion and consumes rather than enables.

> Who you are determines what you do.

Technically this is correct. However, it ignores choice and the value of personal growth found in honest introspection.

> What you do reflects who you are.

Very true. And if one chooses to do something different than what would have been done as an earlier version of oneself, does that not reflect growth?

> The path you are walking on, whether to your design or not, requires power to prevent straying.

Choice is not power, even though it is powerful, unless the assumed one of the multitude of definitions cited is the first:

  The ability to do or undergo something.

Which is incongruent with the implication of what I originally quoted:

  The lesson is clear, that if you want a world you want to 
  be a part of, then you must become powerful and choose to 
  use that power for good.
  

So which is it?

You're going from a conventional understanding of "power", along the lines of how it is discussed in politics. I'm suggesting an alternative understanding. Power can mean the enabler of an action. Power can mean the quality of being able. Power is neither good nor bad; but power can stand in relation to a context that is good or bad. Power is associated with mostly anything that has meaning: a weapon, a sentence, a conviction, an innate ability, a fortune, a name. Why can police beat down nonviolent protestors? Because the police are powerful. Why can an idea become a movement? Because the idea, and the people who participate, are powerful. Choice is powerful; to have choices and to make choices involves power. A drop of water has the power to fall, gravity has the power to make it fall, and I have the power to reach out and catch the drop. There's power in anything, if you want there to be. Isn't the fact that one is drawn to ascribe power to a concept indicative of the power of the concept? But I think "potential" is sufficient as a definition.