What Would Be Your Superpower?

I don’t sleep very well. Never have.

So I have invented a series of activities that I do in my head while I am trying to fall asleep. I count prime numbers. I invent offensive plays for the football team I play on in the fall. I pray for my family and friends.

But my favorite activity is this: I try to invent superpowers.

This started about ten years ago, after the first X-Men movie was released. It was the first good comic book movie to come out since the very first Batman by Tim Burton with Jack Nicholson as the Joker.

After I saw X-Men the first time I went home wondering what mutant power I would claim as my own, if given the choice. It eventually became a kind of game. The rules are simple to this game. You have to invent a power that is unique, and one you’ve never seen on TV, the movies, or comic books. It actually isn’t that easy especially as this genre of fiction has gotten more and more attention in the media.

Every time a new hero movie comes out I start playing the game again. This summer there was another rash of them with Thor, X-Men, Green Lantern and Captain America, and so I’ve played the game more often.

The trick is to somehow combine multiple powers into one. Everyone wants to be able to fly, but that isn’t unique. Therefore you have to invent a way to fly that is unique.

For instance, you might say that your “superpower” is to control and manipulate any existing heat in the environment around you. So maybe you can use warm currents in the air to lift you up in flight. Not only can you fly then, but you can use the same heat to melt things too (like bullets, nuclear missiles or the cheese on your sandwich). I don’t know, I just thought of that off the top of my head. But you get the idea.

Each of my boys has a favorite hero. They are Captain America, Thor and Batman. In Captain America you have an ordinary guy named Steve Rogers, who is given the “Super Soldier Serum,” and he becomes stronger and faster than any normal man on the planet. Thor is a Norse God that has taken a keen interest in us puny Earthlings.

And Batman…well Batman has issues. Yet, he doesn’t have any superpowers. He’s just this really angry man who wants to destroy all injustice because his parents were killed by criminals among many other things. Here’s the thing about Batman: he is a billionaire. Whatever he doesn’t have in superpowers he makes up in technology that can counter superpowers.

The other thing about inventing a superpower is that you then have to invent a name and begin thinking about a disguise or costume. Superhero names are like domain names now, they are all taken. You almost have to start thinking about a name in a foreign language in order to create one that is unique.

As far as the costume is concerned, mine would NOT have tights. I never understood how tights could be an advantage, unless bizarre and weird can be considered an advantage. Imagine the insecurity you would feel the first time you stepped out into public with your costume and tights.

Awkward.

Should a grown man with a family be given over to so much thought about comic book heroes? Maybe I can be forgiven because I have three young boys, but I have a feeling that absent my children I’d still be having similar streams of thought.  So I ask myself, “Why this is all so interesting to me?”

I will not attempt to generate some flimsy altruistic rationale about using these powers to create a better world (I would try to do that, of course) because it wouldn’t be the genuine or honest reason.

I suppose the truest reason to want superpowers is that I just want to be that special. I want to be thought of as that special. I’m not kidding when I say this- I almost choked on my own humiliation when I read that sentence. Again, what grown man wants to be “special.” It is infantile and worthy of mockery.

And yet, there it is.

I want to be THAT special. My friends have lovingly and respectfully laid the term “narcissist” upon my character before. I might counter that I simply have healthy self-esteem but let’s not argue semantics. Either way, I like who I am- and yet I still want to be that special.

After the novelty of having a super power wears off, and you tire of flying through the clouds or cooking your grilled cheese sandwiches with your mind powers what does one do? I guess you might begin with vigilante justice and drop off car thieves, white collar criminals and professional athletes at the doorstep of the police chief with a note of witty explanation detailing their crimes. But when none of this makes a dent in the actual problem of society, what does one do?

Get bitter and cynical like almost all super heroes do.

There is a popular verse in the Bible about love that is always read at weddings. It is in 1 Corinthians 13 (Love is patient, love is kind…). It is a verse taken out of context though the principal can be broadly applied.

In context Paul is addressing a church in Corinth that has been given many of the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit and as happens when you put a group of talented people together, many of them begin posturing and arguing over which of these “powers” is most useful and important. As the author attempts to bring some order and logic to their argument he takes time in chapter 13 to point out that none of their gifts compares to the ordinary virtues of faith, hope and love. Such virtues endure long after the flash and glamour of their “powers” fade away.

The lesson there is obvious.

There is no real short cut to making things better or changing the world around us. It is slow tiring work that is done one person at a time, over a long time. No man or woman that can run faster than the speed of light or who can control the weather will inspire your neighbor to stop screaming and berating their children for the whole neighborhood to hear. They will not stop fathers from abandoning their families. They will not make young and insecure men or women feel differently about themselves as they walk the cold hallways of the academic arena.

Only the virtues we’ve nurtured and selflessly apply will bend and change the course of those individuals.

That said, there still remains the “cool factor” of just discovering you have a superpower. Perhaps you were bitten by a radioactive raccoon, or you were given a blood transfusion from an alien species or you found some ancient ring from Atlantis – it doesn’t matter how – so that now you have a special ability. A superpower.

What would yours be? What would you do with it? And finally, would you actually wear tights in your costume?