Linchpin

Linchpin is defined as: 1 a pin passed through the end of an axle to keep a wheel in position; 2 a person or thing vital to an enterprise or organization. Without the linchpin, a wheel is dangerously unstable and at risk of falling away, putting anyone in the wheels path in jeopardy. Taking this theme a little farther, a human linchpin is the make or break vitality of an enterprise or organization and without the linchpin, there is a dead in the water feeling, a no go, not going to happen sentiment. Distilling this idea further, we have linchpin attitudes and perspectives. Let's use a highly charged example from a relational viewpoint. If you do what I want you to do, say what I want you to say, behave the way I have commanded you, I in turn will drop in the safety linchpin in our relationship by rewarding you with kind gestures, a sweet demeanour and disposition and happiness between us will abound. Now let's explore what happens when the opposite is true. Test me, go on, go against what I have dictated as acceptable word, deed, thought and like a hand grenade, I will pull that linchpin and you WILL feel the excruciating pain of having to live in negative space relationship with me. I speak of the linchpin in the negative, as a manipulative tool of possible destruction. This is not the intended dictionary definition and yet, it works in my example. The forces of good and evil, they live within us. We get to choose how we weild or weld, rip apart or melt chocolate like together. We have this power to help or hinder, heal or hurt and we are pivotal in the lives of those who cross our paths. Being pivotal is defined as: of crucial importance in relation to the development or success of something else, in other words, it is much like a linchpin. Now let's look at you, what kind of linchpin are YOU?