Superhero

I lean back in my chair, head cocked to the side, confident and full of myself; pretending I am a superhero. I lift one eye brow with a slight grin. 'I can do anything' I whisper to myself. 'Because I'm a freekin' superhero! And superheros have super powers.' I grin widely.

But then I glance back at the computer area in front of me; papers scattered about, bits of old projects left unfinished on top of the printer and left on and around stacks of CDs. Around my feet lay wires tangled with themselves from old and broken parts of who-really-knows-whats. I'm not really smiling anymore.

Among the heaps of junk and potentially useful items is a College catalog with course listings. I let out a sigh and sit back in my chair normally, snatching the book out from under a pile of old art work. I flip it open to some papers stuffed into the pages. Enrollment papers for the coming semester. 'I want to go to school', I tell myself, in a less than convincing voice. Barely audible. I stare at the book for a bit but then I toss it back onto the pile, and set to work on getting rid of some of the mess.

I shuffle through some papers lying on the desk. I look back at the computer screen, and see a face smiling out at me. It's the face of a baby. Amy. She's only a month old. Her little face smiles out of the computer screen, the rest of her body wrapped up warmly in the embrace of her father. His face smiling along side hers. I put down the papers and look at the picture on the screen. 'Hi Amy.' I say. My heart begins to ache a bit. It must be so comfortable there, in her father's arms. He's got a hold of her snug and tight. You can tell he's not going to let go of his little girl any time soon. How peaceful it looks to be a part of that picture. 'I want to be a mother', I begin to say, less audible than before.

I bookmark the page, and close the window. Why was that painful to look at? I decide to change rooms and I go get the papers I left with my church books. I begin leafing through and find the notes from church I took earlier this morning. Notes about being kinder to people, and about what faith really is, and about what separates hope from belief. There on the corner of one piece of paper is the scribbled words 'Note to self: Go on a mission'. There's so much that intrigues me about the gospel. I believe it. I want to share it with people. 'I want to go on a mission', I say. But am I too scared, I wonder?

I continue working on recording the notes in other places so that I can throw out all the bits of paper that have been collecting over a period of much-too-long. But I don't know how to throw some of them out. Some of them are pieces of art work, swirls and lines, shaded pictures mixed in with my notes. How do I throw those out? They aren't exactly masterpieces, but they aren't exactly transferable to some other place, and I still want to keep them. After a while, I stop. I go back to the computer chair by the window. I'm not interested in sorting papers anymore. I'll leave that for some other time. When I care more. Maybe I'm bored. Maybe I'm ADD. Then again, maybe I don't care if I'm ADD.

But, what do I care about? I wonder to myself. What do I want to do? I've got a job. I work at a daycare. I could keep working there. But for what? But I don't really want to work there anymore. Working there isn't what I want to be doing in a few months. Maybe it's because I am not dedicated, and I just don't want to do something I'm not enjoying, or maybe it's because having worked there has made me dislike children, and I think that is wrong. So I ask myself again, 'what do I want to do?'

'I want to start a business', I say, half wishing someone was listening so they could give me some sort of motivation. It would be amazing to change the world in some way through a business I created. The truth is, I want to begin changing the world through my efforts to help people. I want to help people all over the world. 'And I want to travel too'. I hear the words come out, but by the time they are out, my mind has already moved on. I want to travel, but what about all the other stuff I want to do? Do I have the guts? Do I know what's coming? Can I do any one of these things and not miss out on the rest?

I sigh. I lean back in my chair, and cock my head, looking out the window. 'I want to be a superhero', I say. This time I can barely muster up the words. 'Maybe then I'd have the guts to try something. Anything. Even if it was just finishing clearing up this messy room. I'd do something exciting. After all, I'd have super powers.'

But nothing changes. The leaves aren't even rustling in the wind. It's all the same. Same as when I looked out the window the first time. And I'm not a superhero. I don't have super powers. And I can't bend the rules.

I sigh again. I wish someone would push me in some direction. Then I wouldn't have to choose and come up with my own motivation. I'd just have to keep the momentum.

I get out of the chair, and begin cleaning the papers off the desk. Frustrated, and weary I trudge on, hoping somewhere in the mix and confusion of it all, someone will save me from the fate of the unfortunate soul, born as a regular. Not a superhero... Not even a sidekick... Not super at all.

Darkness exists due to the absence of light.

I must have been fairly bored to be staring at my hand so intently. The way the light hit it just so.... I’m sure I looked equally odd when I held my hand still and moved my head down to get a look at the shadowy underside of it. But luckily no one was in the room, so there was no witness to my odd behavior.

It was about that point when I came to a conclusion about light and darkness. Here is an observation, which can be seen at any point in time by any person with access to the sun, a candle or even a child’s plug in night light; it’s not new information. I relate the metaphor to life. Light being anything that uplifts and makes one to feel better in the long term. Darkness being anything that depresses and makes one feel worse in the long term.

Here is the metaphor.

You can light a candle or lamp or turn on a light in any dark room, and the result is a spreading of light through out the whole room, the brightness of the light depending on the power behind the source. Light spreads in all directions, insistently outward, bouncing off the white walls, traveling quite a distance into and around the room, and reflects off of mirrors. In this way, light is shared and spread all over. The light naturally disperses everywhere, lighting everything it can reach.

But these qualities are not reproducible with darkness or shadow. A shadow or darkness cannot spread every direction through the room by lighting a ‘dark’ source, or bouncing off the walls or reflecting in a mirror. Darkness doesn’t spread itself or naturally disperse like light.

I looked at my hand and noticed that the light is only blocked in small areas by objects, and that that is what causes shadow. The light source is there, and then the object blocks the light source's reach to a certain area. That's what darkness is. You can't burn a dark candle, and make a shadow light. You can block the light to small degrees by placing objects in the way of the light, but shadow and darkness does not spread like light. You can have a singular shadow from an object, but there is no type of burning, spreading darkness.

There is one more piece to this. And that piece is that candles, or any light needs a source or fuel. It needs energy or fuel to keep it going. The only power the darkness has over the light besides blocking portion of it's reach, is the power of giving up or drying up. When the fuel runs out or the source dries up, there is darkness. So if we continue striving, hoping believing and trusting, we have power over the darkness, but as soon as we give up, darkness can take over. Other than our own hope drying up, light and goodness prevails.

This is the metaphor I came to realize while staring at my hand. Oh the things we think when we are bored. And yes, I am very glad for the blessing of every once in a while, having nothing to do, being bored enough to stare at my own hand and the light casting shadows on it.

Belief Prison

I was sitting outside, beside our foggy glass picnic table, basking in what was probably the last of the summer sun when some sort of tiny flying bug flew randomly over to where I was and underneath the table. After zigzagging around a bit as though it were searching for something important it had lost in at the beach, it suddenly (like bugs do) zipped upward, obviously expecting to keep the upward momentum. It hit the glass again and again and again, trying to fly up. It bounced a rough full circle around the underside of the table, eventually stopping to clean itself.

I’ve seen this natural phenomenon over and over where the stupid bug doesn’t understand that simply flying over and up would have much more effective results. Sometimes it needs to fly down, over and up, which yes, is a bit too complicated for an insect, but if only they could wrap their infinitesimally small minds around it, there wouldn’t be so many dead wasps and other insects trapped in windows, bug traps and empty upside-down peanut butter containers.

Many people (if not all) in some aspect or another are like that little bug. The glass is like the beliefs we hold about the universe. If we believe something is so, so it is. We say to ourselves that it is so, and it is so. It is our own beliefs that may set us free or imprison us. The insect didn’t understand the glass, and most of us don’t understand the invisible obstacles and walls that hold us from accomplishing the amazing. We can’t see clearly through the glass, because our beliefs of the world are skewed. As always, we see the world the way we believe it is, because of past experiences, and ‘that is just how it is.’

We can’t tell exactly what is on the other side, yet we faithfully continue pummeling with all our weight against the glass surface, sure that there is something of worth on the other side worth wrecking ourselves over. Maybe it’s all the pummeling and brain damage the little bugs receive that make it impossible for them to connect the dots that going around or under would save their lives.

For us, it is hard to keep trying after failing again and again. We can choose to give up and curl into a ball to die like most insects do, or fight for a way out of our self-imposed belief prison. And yes, if we keep fighting while holding the same beliefs then we will have the same experience, and probably receive brain damage.

We all have those grudges, insistencies or stubborn tendencies to live certain ways. We insist on slamming up against the obstacles we could so easily get around, if only we could wrap our minds around the simple changing of beliefs. It would save us most frustration and give us time in the long run.

Sometimes, we can hazily see what’s out there but we run away from it, believing the sight to be false, and we don’t want to trust in the false, right? So we curl up and die. Just joking, we don’t die, but metaphorically speaking, we kill off faith, hope and the belief of something better. The part of us that says “try, live, and learn.” So we give up. And that is the worst thing to do in this life. That coming from one who’s given up too many times.

If only we could see, that moving over a little bit, adjusting our belief, allowing room for the unknown, we would fly out from beneath the glass, and become free.


"Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe." - St. Augustine