Super Power

As a kid, I always asked the important questions. What scares you?

And where most would say spiders, or their math tutor, you said the future. You said the idea of choosing your path at the age of sixteen, forgetting about your childhood as if it were all a dream and you’ve just been woken.

You said getting your heart broken, as if you knew more about love than the adults that stared down upon you. You say the idea of giving someone something so fragile as if it was made of glass. You said it scares you, because you believed love is something that wasn’t made to last.

As a kid I asked the important questions. What makes you happy?

You said happiness was like an opportunity. You take it whatever chance you get. You have a life time to feel regret, so why waste these small pockets of joy lingering in the dark corners of your mind. Open your mind to a world filled with beautiful and let yourself shine.

As a kid I asked the important questions. If you could have any super power, what would it be?

You responded with the ability to fly. And when I asked why, I waited expecting you to say so you could travel the world. So you could feel what it was to have the wind dance with your hair, so you could ride the breeze. But you said so you could feel completely weightless. So you could finally resist gravities constant attempt to drag you down, as if it were working with stress and anxiety in an attempt to keep your feet planted on the ground,

You said you’d be super strong, and not so you could fight injustice and wrong. You said you would have strength so you could finally stand up for yourself. As if instead of pushing yourself off the ground again and again you would instead push the ground off you.

You said you would read minds, so you could finally know what people think of you. Distil any fears or doubts and know for sure that when they say “I love you” they actually mean it.

If I could have any super power I would shape shift. That way I could do all those things. Turn into a plane and I could fly, turn into a car I could drive away from my fears, and escape them in full. Turn into a flower and experience what it’s like to finally be something beautiful. But specifically, it is so when life gets too much, I could shift into the background and disappear. Turn invisible.

As a kid, I asked the important questions. Mum, why don’t you love dad any more. And it was then and there I learned, not all questions are worth asking, just as not all answers are worth seeking. Especially the ones that end with your heart breaking.

The only thing worse than being lied to is being lied to by loved ones.

I learnt that people use lies in order to try protect you from the truth, as they’re scared they’ll damage you. But what’s more damaging is when I believed those lies, only to find out that they were untrue.

So as a kid, I learnt to ask the important questions. As a teen, I learnt not all answers are worth seeking, and as a man I learnt to ask the irrelevant questions that make you happy, and avoid asking the important ones. Forget about them, bottle them up, cast them out to sea.

So as a man let me ask you. If you could have any super power, what would it be?