LQ McDonald III Look around. The world needs saving. Everyday we see and hear the awful, sad truths of where the world is headed and we hear all the terrible stories about the people making it worse. There are so many takers in the world. So many destroyers. So many villains. What the world needs now is more people to defend it. More givers. More creators. More superheroes.
But where do we find these modern-day superheroes in a world that is producing more villains than heroes? You need look no further than in a mirror. We all have the potential to be what the world needs now. We don’t have to be multi-billionaire playboys/girls or be bit by radioactive spiders or born on another planet with supernatural powers to take up the call of the superheroes life. None of those things are requisites to being a superhero in the world today.
We can work our meaningless jobs in faceless corporations, sometimes barely scraping by, and when the world needs a powerful champion, with unquestionable super powers, to lend a hand we can slip into a phone booth, take of our glasses and work clothes, change into our colorful unitards of fucking awesomeness and save the world.
So, how do we manage to gain modern-day superpowers? Well, we start by doing some of the things below.
Filter Your Media
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” – Mark Twain
There is something so soul sucking and mind numbing about the nature of today’s media; social and mainstream. I don’t care what side of the political fence you are on. Liberal. Conservative. Independent. Bi-Liberal. Trans-conservative. Independently Conservatively Liberal. Whatever. You have to agree that the media is filled with countless, sensationalized shit storms of sadness, heartache and destruction. Sure, maybe the world has completely devolved into this spreading, hellish landscape of terror, but I don’t think it has, and the fact that the media chooses to cover all this crap in the way it does makes it a prime candidate for something I choose to mostly ignore.
I am not telling you to bury your head in the sand and ignore the world. I am not ignorant of current events or the power of the media to bring light to otherwise buried atrocities or important issues. I am saying the opposite. Go out there and formulate your own educated opinions about things based upon experience, deep, researched facts and honest, evolved intuition. Don’t just blindly trust a source because some talking head puked it out on your favorite morning news station or you read it in the local tabloid gazette.
Question everything, always, and by doing so you gain the superhero power of telling the truth from the lies and an even stronger power of seeing through other people’s bullshit. This goes a long way towards knowing what to concern yourself with, what are the real issues we need to face and where you should spend your precious superhero time lending a hand.
Super Power Gained: Enhanced Bullshit Detection
Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There!
“To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.” – Oscar Wilde
One of the best ways that people can save the world is just to stop doing things. Stop buying so much shit. Stop consuming so much shit. Stop drinking so much shit. Stop eating so much shit. Stop producing so much shit. Stop thinking about so much shit. Just stop! We have a knack for introducing and embracing needless excess and complexity into our lives, and it all builds up into this great lumbering snowball of shit we have to push up the steep mountains of our lives, like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill.
Meditation is such a powerful way that we can just sit there and do nothing while also creating a stronger mind and a more balanced connection to our emotions. It has been stated by so many people in so many ways, but the benefits of meditation are consistently ignored because we think we don’t have time to just sit there with ourselves. We think doing more means we are being more; that somehow we are contributing more. The only time you are being or contributing more is if you are being and contributing with the right intention and awareness, for the right reasons and effects, and that means taking some time to truly get to know yourself and the world around you by taking some moments each day to reflect on these things.
Making time to meditate will create the superhero power of supreme focus and an unflappable mental resilience that is never violated by other people’s minds games. It will also make you a more compassionate and emotionally balanced person and those two things alone are among the rarest of human superpowers.
Super Power Gained: Impenetrable Mental Armor
Love Yourself
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy
The world needs each and every one of us to feel whole, healthy and loved. The sad part is everyone is out there wandering around looking for someone to give them that. Well, you are the only person who can give yourself those things because the indomitable, lasting strength of them comes internally. Sometimes this means saying no to people who say they need you, because you know they really don’t. Sometimes that means cutting out some toxic relationships. Sometimes that means curling up on a Friday night with a book, some tea and your phone on silent, because you just can’t deal with all the crazy bullshit that sometimes blows up in your life or you don’t want to sit through another booze fueled marathon of shitty dance music and meaningless conversation. It’s ok if you are selfish like that sometimes, if it means that later on you can give more of yourself, because you are mentally, physically and emotionally capable of being present, patient and helpful to the world.
There are so many moments in our lives where we could be spared so much sadness and heartache, and we could be of better service to the world, if we just took better care of ourselves in a seemingly selfish way. Even a superhero needs to recover from the damage of life and being self nurturing is an ancient, miraculous medicine. Like the old proverb says, “Physician, heal thyself!”
Taking the time to know, enjoy and love yourself offers the super power of personal healing and limitless confidence. You can quicker recover from the mental or physical wounds of life like a superhero by taking the time to find the center of yourself and enhancing the love you have there. Yes. It’s hard and it can mean some solitude while you explore the beauty of who you are and what you want out of life, but sometimes being a superhero is lonely work.
Super Power Gained: Unlimited Self-Regeneration
Get Rid Of Your Baggage
“Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.” ― Charles Dudley Warner
Mental, physical and emotional baggage is a drain on every super hero’s life and dragging it around everywhere you go makes you generally ineffective in the world. You need to unload some of your crap and realize the true speed and agility you are capable of. Give away material things that you don’t use, or need, to charity. Talk to a friend or professional about things that are bothering you about life and let those mental burdens fall off your shoulders. Get your body in shape, dumping those extra pounds, so you feel more comfortable in your own skin. Drop a relationship that has become toxic. I guarantee you know what things are weighing you down and you just need a reason to get rid of them, or at the very least, set them down for a while. The reason is: if you find a way to simplify your life – everything in your life – you become capable of quickly traversing the pitfalls and setbacks. You become incapable of being held down by anyone or anything and you will find it is just so easy to spring back up the mountain of life when you take a little fall.
Yes, cutting some of these things out of your life might seem hard at first, but once you start giving, to others and yourself, and start ridding yourself of all the personal and mental garbage, you will find it becomes harder and harder to pick any of it back up because you get used to the feeling of being lighter and you get used to traveling with only the necessities for an amazing journey through life.
And like a superhero dodging bullets you are quick enough to dodge the desire to accumulate needless crap, to dodge other people’s negativity and to dodge the constant pull of life’s troubles. Most importantly, you can redirect all the extra emotional energy and agility that you wasted on carrying those things around towards giving to others, and to yourself, in more valuable ways with a quickness you never had before, and that is what being a superhero is all about.
Super Power Gained: Supernatural Emotional Agility
Conclusion
I suppose you can see the general theme of my message here; if you want to change the world, if you really want to be a fucking superhero with superpowers, you have to start with yourself. It all starts there. There is no saving the world if you can’t save ourself. Each one of us needs to develop our own superpowers and only can we begin to save the world.
Changing yourself and becoming a person who knows how to cut through bullshit, who knows how to manage the stress and the strain of everyday life, who knows when to say no and who knows how to get rid of their baggage, is what the world needs right now. Those are the real superheroes of the modern age, because they are so few and far between and their presence changes the world. The world is always going to consider well adjusted, emotionally resilient, compassionate people as superheroes because the things they can accomplish are amazing and beyond understanding sometimes.
People like that can spend a lot of time helping others and never feel like they are spread too thin. People like that can do battle with the negative forces of this world – the villains and destroyers – and begin to right the wrongs and renew hope in the world; just like a superhero does. So go buy that colorful unitard, go invest in a pair of identity concealing glasses and go save the fucking world!
