What is good?
     -All that heightens the feeling of power,
      the will to power, power itself in man.

What is bad?
     -Everything that is born of weakness.

What is happiness?
     -The feeling that power is growing
     -That resistance is overcome.

The Anti-Christ, by Friedrich Nietzsche, Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. aphorism 2

The good and power are not ideas that you’d think belong together.  In our time living in the wake of the industrial revolution we are accustomed to conceive of power in terms of something mechanically engineered: a powerful automobile for example. Also we often think of power in terms of politics, the management of society.  As war is a constant reality somewhere in the world, power as military effectiveness easily comes to mind. 

But consider power as the natural trajectory, the-way-of-all-life!?  Fulfillment, overflowing, self-cultivation and enhancement are words that also seem descriptive of the role of power which Nietzsche had in mind.

While transferring photos from my camera, I noticed these which were captured several months ago. Two examples of growth and ascendancy are depicted by these images. The child is four years old. The crimson Amaryllis, ‘Cherry Nymph’ became more magnificent than we anticipated when we purchased the plant.  

We should never forget that growth, progress, means that something must be overcome, surpassed by a advanced, more fulfilled life.  Overcoming resistance.  Something dies, so that something else may live.

Nietzsche continues on:

Not contentment; but more power;
not peace at any price but war;
not virtue (dripping with moral acid)
but fitness.