An Amorphous Definition of Power, Thanks to my Dad

My father’s greatest gift to me was unlike any other. It was never an enticing box under a tree, nor did it have a colored ribbon to pull. It was bare and simple.

My father’s greatest gift to me was his advice. It wasn’t the typical bundle of inspiring quotes wrapped in speeches or urgency. It was three simple things: be prepared, don’t waste opportunity, and understand money. To 8-year-old Luciana, this quiet form of advice meant nothing. 

I had been growing up in a world full of noise. Power, as I understood it then, was something you projected. Something people could notice about you. It showed up in the way people spoke, with exigent language, the way they dressed, in tailored clothes with fine fabrics, and the way they presented themselves to the public. Because my father’s words didn't match that definition, I dismissed the chance that they could hold power of their own.

What I didn’t understand was that his advice came from a completely different reality than mine. 

My dad grew up in Colombia, on the outskirts of Bogota, where families depended on their weekly cartons of milk and had no time to fantasize about their next commercial purchase. Opportunity wasn’t something you waited for. It was something you had to hunt for and take without hesitation. 

On one of our recent trips back to Bogota, we spent the whole day with my family. We ate my grandmother’s famous homemade patacón, and spent the day playing Tejo. Later that night, my father reminded me that days like these weren’t normal for my family. Going out to play games wasn’t something they did casually. It was something they had to save up for every month, and my father urged me to understand that moments like these were never taken for granted. Before this, I had never realized that something as simple as going out to play a game, something so common in my own life, was not in theirs. So it stuck with me.

My father was someone who never took those moments for granted. He would tell me about a moment in school when a teacher pulled him aside and mentioned a program that would allow him to study abroad. 

1. Be prepared 

It meant leaving Bogota, leaving his family, and most importantly, leaving everything familiar behind. This was something that to me sounds like the norm, but to live in Colombia always meant to stay in Colombia. So, he had to be prepared. 

2. Don’t Waste Opportunity 

Most people around him didn't take chances like that. Not because they didn’t want to, but because the risk had a greater cost. If something went wrong, they would risk permanently closing doors to success. However, my dad took the chance. To him, there was nothing to lose. Closing doors to success just meant living the way the rest of my family does. So, he did not waste this opportunity. 

3. Understand Money

That decision changed the entire trajectory of his life. A few years later, he was sitting in classrooms miles away from Bogota, learning in a language he once barely understood. He is the reason I grew up hearing stories about places far from home, and why moving across the world to Singapore was simply possible to us.

Taking that risk taught him that power wasn’t loud or immediate. It was quiet preparation. It was recognizing a moment before it would pass. Because if he hadn’t seized that opportunity, he would have been left behind, like the rest of his family. 

My dad never dramatized his past. He never raised his voice about what he had risked. So, I completely missed his meaning with the three phrases he repeated once in a while at our family dinners. Now I understand why his advice was so simple. Be prepared, don’t waste opportunity, and understand money. They weren’t rules; they were ways of power. 

His advice was his greatest gift to me because it forced me to grow into the meaning of power on my own. I had to mature and see it with my own eyes before realizing what it meant. And in doing so, I learned that power is something that one has to recognize and take advantage of when it is presented. It wasn’t loud, but came from within.