HopeFul Reflections

Waking up, making a bowl of fruity pebbles, and rushing to sit and watch “Superman the Animated Series” is a fond childhood memory. I was enamored with the show and its amazing music, fantastic storylines, and captivating fights. I understand the common complaint people have with superman, that he is absurdly powerful and thus lacks any real struggle in his representations. I feel that this analysis is missing something. Fantastic as his powers may be, superman has always struggled and most amazingly it’s been with the man part of the superman identity. While the world knows him as the symbol of hope, he knows himself first as the simple son of two farmers from Kansas.

The Task of Humility
Comic representations depict him as near unstoppable. Given the magnitude of his powers, he could simply impose his will on others and choose to ignore the finer details of life simply because he can. Instead, he chooses to humble himself and use his gifts to serve others. He lives first as a man that faces the everyday struggles of relationships, helping his neighbors, and trying to forgive those who have wronged him instead of choosing vengeance. Different superman storylines have explored what could happen if the hero were to use his power to rule over others and while interesting, that’s not the hero I love. The hero I love is the one that appears in “All-Star Superman” who talks a girl off a ledge using his lesser-known powers: his kindness and compassion. He looks and speaks to her eye to eye. He listens to her struggles and relates them to his own life. He respects her choices amid the chaos of what is occurring below with the rescue team. Finally, he chooses to stay with her and keep her company while she makes her choice whether he agrees with it or not. This is not the way an all-powerful despot would handle the situation. He didn’t minimize her value as a person and believe his will to be greater, he connected with her and valued her enough to speak to her as an equal. Another storyline, “Superman: Red and Blue”, tells of his capture and torture for months on end. When he is finally free, he is put in a situation where politically, he cannot get revenge on the people who hurt him. He’s left hurt and with a choice to use his powers to take vengeance or walk away from the pain and choose a different path. Amazingly he decides to embrace the reporter side of his persona. He decides to write about the atrocities those men have and will commit and go about his justice, instead of vengeance, in a nonviolent way.

Where Does it Come From?
What I believe to be an interesting aspect of the Superman stories is the influence of his parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent. The man he is today is because of them. His boy scout nature and ability to live as a man while having powers rivaling the strongest beings in his universe are owed to his parents, with many storylines focusing on his father as his moral compass. However, that’s the thing. I fully believe that if for some reason his father was given his powers we’d rally behind him just the same. This revelation changed things for me. Why don’t we celebrate the man and woman that shaped him just as much as we do the child? The answer is that his parents aren’t faster than a speeding bullet, and more powerful than a locomotive. However, were it not for them, their son wouldn’t be the hero he is recognized for being. As cool as it would be to have super speed and super strength we’re much more similar to ma and pa Kent. Nevertheless, we have to remember that that is an amazing role to have. We are not simply some random people in a story, our actions have far-reaching consequences. The fortitude and strength of character of Jonathan and Martha Kent are the sources of Superman’s fortitude and strength of character. We cannot belittle ourselves for not doing fantastical things of global magnitude. The little actions we take every day are so much more important than we often realize. The kindness you show today is the kindness the stranger that you helped shows tomorrow. The strength you develop today is the strength that others lean on when tragedy inevitably strikes. The suffering you endure today, terrible as it may seem, is the reason you can connect to someone else’s pain and serve as an anchor in their time of need.

A Change in Perspective
I’ve recently been reading “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl, which I highly recommend. In the book, he discusses the age-old question of “what’s the meaning of life?”. He decided that the question is not appropriate as we are all incredibly unique individuals and we cannot prescribe a one size fits all solution. The question should be, and forgive my paraphrasing, “What can I expect from life?” or “What can life expect from me?”. We wait for fate to run its course and then we are tasked with choosing how we respond. These choices are incredibly powerful. They are expressions of who we wish to give to the world. We can live a 1000 years as the villain of our stories, hardened by experience, cynicism and the hand fate dealt us, but always have the choice to wake up one day and partake in one act of kindness, a change in perspective, or focus on something good. We always have a choice, no matter the situation. The choice may be a small one, but it is ours. If we cannot save a million people, we try to save a thousand. If we cannot save a thousand we can aim for one hundred. If we cannot save one hundred we can save one friend or begin with ourselves. If even that is too great we can begin to center our actions on good. If that is too difficult we can center our minds on good until we are able to act. The point of that drawn out example is that we can humbly take small steps towards becoming the people we wish to become.

The role of humility
I understand that not all of us are destined to do things on a scale that reaches millions and so I’m most likely to only ever reach a couple of people. However, if I even reach one person then I’ve been successful. There have been times when I’ve helped friends who have been deep into depression and they’ve talked about the role I had in saving them from taking permanent measures. Well, when I talked to them, even if I didn’t know the impact that would have, they were just one person. I would never minimize the value of a friend by reducing them to a statistic, so if I reach anyone at all and can have some sort of positive impact then I am truly lucky. The Kents were simple people who didn’t have much special about them, but their choices and their great characters lead to the nurturing of the greatest comic book superhero of all time. When they found him in a field in Kansas he was just one person.

So what Do I Do With This
I believe that what all this talk of purpose boils down to is living well when confronted with the obstacles life provides us. I say provides because each obstacle is an opportunity to express or vote, as James Clear describes it in his book “Atomic Habits”, for the person we wish to become. However, in order to properly face these obstacles we need humility to see clearly what lays ahead of us. Pride blurs our vision, makes us believe the rules of the world don’t apply to us, and causes us to lose sight of what is really important. In choosing humility I recognize my strengths and my gifts with full objectivity. I am able to look past my ego and understand when I need help, where I fit in, and where I am most useful. Humility also allows me to see where I am failing and to what I am blinded. It stops me from my endless cycle of futility because I think someone else is to blame never seeing how fruitless my egotistical plans have been. I regain control by owning my failures and reassessing the situation.

When I understand that I am simply a man, I can begin to understand that my purpose is in living this life well. That is what my purpose is in this life. All I must do is live well. My life and my problems are unique and what I hope to do is choose wisely when faced with the many options life offers. Personally I feel that living Christ-like allows me to make the best choices and live the best life. I plan to write next about why that is so stay tuned!

Have a great day y’all! I’ll be praying for you.

-James