My kids are fairly obsessed with superheroes — X-men, Arrow, Ironman . . .   I might think they are bit too old to care about that, but I still managed to get infected with the bug.  I don’t care about the individual heroes, although I have a fondness for Wonder Woman, but the powers fascinate me.  On nights when I can’t sleep, I think about it:

Who saves people in distress while wearing a bathing suit?

What power would I pick, if I could just pick one?

The possibilities are as endless as the imagination, of course.  And it’s all a moot point, because, although I consider myself to be a pretty nice person who smiles at strangers, returns groceries I accidentally didn’t pay for, and takes my vitamins, no one ever offers me a superpower.

Kind of frustrating.

Still, thinking about it in the light of day, I had to realize that I could have written a quiz:  Your Favorite SuperPower Reveals Your Personality!    or maybe, …Reveals Your Dominant Stressor.

Let’s take a look:

Invisibility.  This was a good power when I was worrying about kids in the rough parts of Cleveland.  I could sneak in, steal baskets of illegal guns and drop them off at the police station.  Maybe rock neglected babies at night.  Unfortunately I soon realized that my paltry efforts would barely make a dent.  And I kept avoiding the idea of how I could use it to my own advantage (dropping my manuscripts on editor’s desks, learning bank passwords).  I could turn into a Nemesis in about 20 minutes.
Influence.  What if I could shake hands with people, and EVERYONE I shook hands with would be compelled to use their personal gifts to make the world better?   So cool, right?  Now that would make a dent in the pain on the planet.  That’s a great one, except for the whole free agency thing.  Basically, I’d be turning people into minions.  Minions for good, hopefully, but still.
5 Hour Time Stop.  This is a favorite.  I started with the idea of just eliminating sleep.  That would buy me 6-7.5 hours to get done all the things I’m not getting done.  Tempting, but at my late age I’ve finally sort of come to terms with the fact that my body requires sleep, and I’ve (mostly) stopped fighting it.  I’ve (mostly, again) stopped resenting the fact that instead of the advertised ~90 years, you really only get 60 because you have to spend the other 30 unconscious.    I’ve grown kind of fond of sleeping — warm blankets, warm Tom, peaceful drifting.  Why didn’t anyone tell me it could be so pleasant?

So instead I went with 5 extra hours.   At, say, 4:05 pm, I would get up to go to the bathroom.  To the world (ie Tom) I would seem to be gone only a minute.  But I’d have a gratis 5 hours to get things accomplished.  I could get that next book written, study the latest technology or finish a database, then slide back into bed for the rest of the night.

With the first two of those, I told you what I was worried about.  It took me longer to see it with the third.  I’d over-extended myself, signing on to another business that I loved but didn’t have time for.  I wanted the five hours because I’d used up the 24 I’d been allotted.

I became genuinely frustrated that I couldn’t have that power.  That frustration told me what I’d been refusing to see — that I needed to let some things go.

I still allow myself to sort through the options from time to time.   To date, no one has approached me with an offer of any superhero, even a second-rate one like elasticity or arrow-shooting.  But the superhero question does have a different kind of power — alerting me that I’ve exceeded my bandwidth or limitations in some way.  So I’ll try to donate more and write more letters demanding improvements for the little guys, but I’ll try to worry about them less.  Because even without my compellingly good-intentioned handshake, there are a LOT of people out there already fighting for their well-being, so I don’t have to imagine it’s all on me.  And I will (already have) cut my responsibilities to what I can reasonably handle in a day.

So now it’s your turn.  What superpowers would you choose?  Why?   And if it’s really, really appealing, should you be making a change in your own life?