Raise Your Hand if You Don't Want Superpowers

No one's hands raised? Thats what i thought.

Seriously, who wouldnt love to have superpowers? Or to walk through an alien device that allows us to travel to other planets? Or to fight an evil intergalactic Empire from the cockpit of our X-Wing? Or be the underdog starship captian with his merry band of rebels fighting for justice? Or wake up one day to find that your world is being taken over by giant machines driven by slimy aliens, and fight back for all humanity? Who doesnt want to fight, sword in hand, against an all powerful wizard bent on evil? Who doesnt want to be a part of something bigger than themselves and bigger than all humanity?

I know i do. I think it first really started for me when i read JRR Tolkien's Lord Of the Rings trilogy back before the Fellowship of the Ring came out. Sorry, actually it started before that when i read C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. Something hit me about halfway through the Chronicles (Lewis himself called it 'northerness' after his own encounter with Norse mythology when he was a kid) that just made me want to believe with all my heart that the stories i was reading were real and that somehow, somewhere i could be a part of them. If you know what im talking about, you understand the wonder and the excitement that is yours for those brief moments in time. The thrill of just the thought of being a part of some fantastic adventure is enough to make your heart beat faster and send a chill up your spine. Every little kid grows up of being a dark knight fighting the terrible dragon, or a princess waiting to be rescued by Prince Charming, or that Army hero that sneaks into the enemy camp and does the secret mission.

But who says those little kid kind of dreams ever die? I bet that if any adult was offered a chance to go fight the evil wizard or save the fair maiden, they would do it without a second thought. Why? Because the little kid never dies, we only suppress the dreams and the fantasies we had as kids. Something deep down inside us longs to so something fantastic, amazing, and wonderful.

Sometimes i wonder what i would have done had i been born earlier in time, maybe somewhere around the Middle Ages. Kings still ruled countries, and had knights and maidens and fought wars that had heroes and villians and swords. Would i have been content with being a lowly serf in his majesty's kingdom, or would i have been an emissary for justice--a Robin Hood of sorts? I don't know. What i do know is today's modern world doesn't lend itself to magical adventures like it used to. Science says that alchemy was a fake. But what if you lived in a time when alchemy was the athourity on things like magic and cures for diseases and science? Those would have been the most interesting of times.

And sometimes i wonder what it would be like to see the future. Will we have colonized another planet in 1000 years? What will people be like? What kind of music and art and pop culture will be around? Will we still be driving cars, or will we be flying from place to place? Will we have mastered interplanetary space travel? Will we have been to other stars and solar systems? Will we have answered the elusive question of life outside the Earth? Those too will be the most interesting of times.

What would it be like if magic were real? Not the dark sorcery kind of magic that has demons and devils and stuff, but the book kind of magic where there are good and bad wizards and people that create armies of evil bats and people that make things appear with a puff of smoke.

What would it be like to do something bigger than ourselves? To be stranded on a deserted island with your family and have to survive for a few years? What would it be like to be a spy for the CIA working in the USSR during the height of the Cold War? I dont know, but i bet i would feel more alive than i ever have.

In this modern society of numbers and statistics and routine, its hard to feel like your life makes much of a difference. We as people are told that we must fit a kind of mold in order to work with soceity; but i say society works better when it doenst try to force people into a box. Some of the greatest creativity and invention and art and music came from a time when people made and worked and talked and did everything as they saw fit to do. The late 1800's and early 1900's saw the golden age of humanity so far. Just the names of the people that were alive in that time create a sense of awe and admiration: Douglas McArthur, George Patton, Tesla, Alexander Graham Bell, Edison, Westinghouse, Ford, Benz, Roosevelt, Mancini, Rudolph Diesel, Babe Ruth, Hiram Maxim, Samuel Colt, Alfred Nobel, Albert Einstien, the Wright Brothers, George Washington Carver, and the list goes on and on. Who are we know for today and who are the famous people? We're known for people like: Michael Jordan, Mother Theresa, Pope John Paul the something, Richard Nixon, Ronald Regan, Marilyn Monroe, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Hillary Duff, and more shallow, plastic, fake people who are a product of the Machine.