There are no two identical people, even twins. Which means no two humans are exactly/perfectly/unquestionably alike. Which means that every Homo Sap sap on earth is unique in the Universe. Further, everyone has a superpower. This superpower begins as neither positive (good) nor negative (bad). Whatever decision we make as to how to use our Superpower determines whether it will eventually be labelled as good or bad by others. And quite often we are not even aware that we have a superpower nor that we are making a decision that we did not intend but will turn out to be impactive anyway.
For example, on August 9, 1945, Kazumi Yamada was 12 years old and lived in Nagasaki, Japan. Earlier that day friends had invited him to go swimming, but Yamada declined—he had to deliver newspapers. At precisely 11:02 a.m. an atomic bomb named “Fat Man” exploded on the city while ‘Kazumi was behind a stone Shinto shrine, which protected him from the blast. His friends were not so lucky and died days after the explosion’.[1]
Young Kazumi probably didn’t know he had a superpower. He just decided to do the right thing by keeping up with his job of delivering newspapers. That doesn’t mean that his friends lacked superpowers. Sometimes a superpower is just making a simple choice. That also does not mean that Kazumi’s friends didn’t have a superpower. It could even mean they didn’t recognize what they had or that they made the conscious decision to go against their feelings.
Have you ever had a strong feeling to do or to not do something? Did you respond to it or ignore it? How did that turn out for you? A superpower is not necessarily going to change your entire life if you eat that candy bar that you had the urge not to eat. But urges are like doggie piddles, once the smell is down it gets harder to resist the urge. However, the neat thing about free will is that habits can be changed. The hard part is to know which habits can smack us in the nose. The sneaky lil buggers can be chameleons at times.
I heartily admit I feel a strain on the credulity when I hear someone say they had no choice. We ALWAYS have a choice. We just don’t always like the choices we have. Or sometimes we don’t want to put the work in to looking for other choices. I’ve been bitten by that bug a few times in my life. Sometimes a superpower can be as simple as saying the right thing to someone at the right time. Or choosing a pleasant, non-interfering color to wear to a friend’s wedding. Or funeral. Or graduation. Or coming out party. Which begs the question: can superpowers change? Move in and out like a transient kitty? I don’t know the answer to that.
What I know about my own superpower is that I never have writer’s block. Truth. Sometimes I don’t like what I have written and I wash the canvas clean, like I do with my art, which is why I love painting with watercolors. Nowadays they call that repurposing. My grandfather called it “Scottish blood leaking through.” I never figured out if that was a positive or negative comment. Because Gramps was a dyed-in-the-wool Irishman. But sometimes he tossed that phrase at Gramma, who was a dyed-in-the-linen Englishwoman. But that was only back in the day when he could run fast. His superpower was knowing what to say to Gramma and when to say it, even when it was in jest. Gramma’s superpower was that in spite of her small size, she could shame an elephant into doing the right thing with a few ladylike/delicate/English words. A match made in superpower heaven, they were.
So why is it important to know that we all have a superpower? For one thing it means no one, NO ONE, is a throwaway person. We all count. Take a lesson from Mama Nature: no living thing is expendable. We may not understand its purpose, but in the end it all glomerates. The awful forest fires consuming trees, animals, homes, people on the West Coast would appear to have no purpose except to tell us Homo Sap saps that it’s time for us to stop making wealth/power our life goals and to choose a lifestyle that doesn’t take Mamacita Nature for granted. Hopefully we can make the right choices before it’s too late for our Ride through the Universe.
“superpower, …an extremely large scale secured by the linking together of a number of separate power systems, with a view to more efficient and economical generation and distribution.” i.e.: When we all work together, we can create an unimaginably great force for good.
In the meantime, celebrate you. Find your superpower and use it for the betterment of your world, our world, our childrens’world. Know that you can make a difference in your lifetime. It doesn’t have to be on a 100 foot tower in blazing lights. Sometimes it can be as simple as loving the animals that seek you out by coming into your life.
Have you hugged your python today…?