Consider: Power

Power. Necessary as an engine. Pernicious as a pursuit. Though little we often believe we have as individuals, we do so love to exaggerate it for the sake of our egos.

Nearly always, power is mistaken for authority. While they may appear identical, they are not the same: the former is possessed, the latter is given. Authority is fickle: a monarch can be toppled within a moment and stripped of all authority, but they may yet retain their power, if indeed they ever had any to begin with.

For power, true power, in its rawest form, is a realized thing, and far more equilateral than is often perceived.

Misunderstood as it is, it's no wonder that so many feel powerless. There is no shame in this: in the context of a story, every character will feel powerless at some point. For the feeling of powerlessness is a sister to fear. Characters that feel no fear are flat and lifeless, unrelatable even to gods and demons, who have also felt the universal forces of terror tugging at their incorporeal coattails.

And within this fear, it is all too easy to forget even the very definition of power and sink into abysmal thoughts of helplessness.

But consider power, not in scope but in deed, for it is only this most elementary thing:

Power is action upon that which can be moved.

The concept is so simple that the barely walking child instinctively knows it. The child that cannot walk, or may never walk, crawls. The child that cannot crawl, writhes in place.

And those who cannot move at all, think. They still find ways to enact their will upon things that can be moved, because they are, in fact, powerful.

This is a deep secret that is so plain to see that it is often overlooked. Power is generally measured in magnitude and arbitrarily respected by scale, but it was never about the size of it. In fact, the most beloved tales of all time revolve around those of fragile power overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles.

This is the very heart of fiction and how it ties into the truth of our humanity. This is where the "good story" is. Not characters singlehandedly overcoming all obstacles with no effort, but characters acting upon what they are able to move.

Even the most powerful fictional heroes operate this way. They still feel fear. Many problems cannot be solved by brute force alone, and those who have only strength to rely on may be at a loss. Even those who are bulletproof may still become heartbroken. Often, the ownership of gross power makes a character feel even more helpless.

True liberation lies in the exercise of basic power, and it is here the character will be most loved. Most developed. Most inspiring. The initial inclination is to languish over what cannot be done to fix the problem directly, but the triumph lies in doing what can be done.

For here, there are secrets within secrets, and a plot twist few pick up on:

The smallest, most seemingly insignificant actions are often the most cataclysmic.

The infiltrating bacteria. The picking of a mushroom. The single kind word. The furtive glance. The called bluff. A stance of solidarity.

For every mountain that must be moved there is a fulcrum. For every star that must be hauled away, there is a pulley. In this way, the fiction is inspired by life, and in turn inspires. There is no "greater power" because any action towards a challenge compounds. Having a little is potentially having much. The glass of water suddenly becomes an ocean.

And regardless of the stakes, the first steps are always the same. Get out of bed. Do what must be done to simply survive, then invoke one's will upon a thing that will move that can ultimately shatter or mend the planet.

None that yet live and breath, whether in flesh or script, are totally powerless, though it is their choice if they wish to believe so. Those characters that move what they are able to move within a moment, and do not fixate on scale, become god-like. For within this infinite universe, there are no small actions, and little is actually of little consequence.