I had a vision with which I might have saved my people, but I had not the strength to do it.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the regret of having insight or foresight but lacking the strength to act on it for the benefit of others.
Black Elk reflects on a profound vision he had that could have potentially benefited his people, highlighting the tension between having great ideas or insights and the personal or collective inability to actualize them. This quote speaks to the burden of knowing one's potential impact but feeling powerless to bring it to fruition.
In practice
During a motivational speech about leadership and vision.
I cured with the power that came through me. Of course, it was not I who cured,it was the power from the Outer World; the visions and ceremonies only made me like a whole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds. If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.
The song and the drumming were like this: Behold, a sacred voice is calling you; All over the sky a sacred voice is calling.
The Universe is circles within circles, and everything is one circle, and all the circles are connected to each other. Each family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth. It (the community) cares for that part (of the Earth) but cares for it as a circle - which is to say in a cooperative and egalitarian way, where everybody is cared for, and everybody is respected.
And as he spoke of understanding, I looked up and saw the rainbow leap with flames of many colors over me.
They told me I had been sick twelve days, lying like dead all the while, and that Whirlwind Chaser, who was Standing Bear's uncle and a medicine man, had brought me back to life.
Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations.
As much as we can, let's defend the truth by pointing to what the apostles taught, and let's call out sin by pointing to the inconsistencies between what we say we believe and what we do.
Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success, and they are in such a hurry to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves. And when the madness is upon them, they argue that their very haste is a species of integrity.
A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.
Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.
Discipline is the highest of all virtues. Only so may strength and desire be counterbalanced and the endeavors of man bear fruit.
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