Raising New Superheroes
Watching two Mexican children play on a beach, I’m inspired to think about the nature of true superheroes.
One child is wearing a Spider-Man shirt, from which I infer that he playfully imagines himself in that superhero role, with superhuman strength, agility, reflexes, and balance. In my own imagination, I envision him emulating Spider-Man by focusing his remarkable powers on fighting crime.
Of course, when this boy reaches his teenage years, he’s less likely to have superhuman web-spinning, crime-fighting powers than to fight the same challenges as Spider-Man’s teenage alter-ego Peter Benjamin Parker: loneliness, feelings of inadequacy, obsessions with rejection. It's the nature of modern existence.
It’s also the nature of existence that we have an innate ability to grow beyond such challenges. People who overcome extreme struggles of emotion and circumstance often grow the greatest depth of compassion, wisdom, gratitude, and forgiveness. Many of us only discover the depth of our ability to transform trouble into growth when we’re tested by intense difficulty. To use that ability in service to the greater good is a true human superpower.
“With great power comes great responsibility,” is Spider-Man’s adage, and it applies to that transformative power inside all of us. I believe we have a responsibility to the gift of life to make the most of that quiet power.
Perhaps the superhero qualities we need to cultivate aren’t in the form of spinning webs the size of skyscrapers, though. Maybe it doesn’t matter that we’ll never leap as gracefully as comic books and movies portray. Maybe we only need to use our own “spider-sense” of danger and precognition to transform trouble into beauty.
That’s challenging. Yet it’s essential and attainable, to use our powers to maintain kindness in the face of chaos. To keep equanimity in a time of extremes. To hold compassion for those with whom we vehemently disagree. To forgive those who have done us harm. To cultivate inner peace in a time of outer war. To recognize that the superheroes around us may not look like us, or speak our language, or share our political or spiritual views. To celebrate those differences, rather than condemn them. To find truth within the tidal waves of misinformation. To be nonjudgmental despite being inaccurately judged. To find daily reasons for celebration and gratitude, in face of plentiful reasons for the opposite.
To me, parents are among the true superheroes—especially those who not only use their transformative powers wisely, but instill them within their children. Yet perhaps it’s the children who will instill those qualities in us. Teachers learn the most from their pupils, after all. There’s no better way to learn than to teach.
In the end, we all raise each other. That too is the nature of human existence, and I celebrate that. Finding ways to support and inspire each other’s inner superheroes is the way we become more than the icon on the other Mexican kid’s shirt: the lazy fat cat Garfield, obsessed with lasagna, hating Mondays, ready to belittle and attack another being just because they’re a dog.