Marshaling your power rather than that of the role means tapping the power of  “with” rather than the power of “over.”

While “Queen” may only be a placeholder, a vestige of an old human desire to organize, determine direction, and move beyond chaos, it brings with it the historical baggage of how the corruptions of “over” supplant the possibilities of “with.”

Would you not agree that like most things, the powers of gratitude, dynamic kindness, and careful listening increase if you ritualize them?

Such ritual need not offer any concession to authority made suspicious for its link to current conflict or past outrage and could be a tangible way to claim (or reclaim) an authority of your own.

You might, for instance, adopt the use of binaries borrowed from your bones rather than from some patriarchal manual of leadership: “Today, again and as is my habit, I do not bother asking if I am strong or weak, good or no, but rather ask if I am a poet or a seeker?

For what its worth, while royalty is essentially objectionable and usually grotesque, I endorse (and think it a model) that worker and drone bees, who spend all day buzzing about as they do their thing (the doing of which makes flowers smell good and produces a yummy substance that lasts for thousands of years) barely notice or care if the queen crawls around with them and yet defer to her absolutely when it comes time to move to a new home or to find a better spot from which to conduct busy-bee business.

One lesson of the hive might be that what matters most is the fine buzzing you do of our own, like making ginger cake.

–Ted