Superman? He ain't got nuthin' on me!

If you had a super power what would it be?

Would you want to be an immortal like Claire from Heroes? Or maybe you would want to have super strength and agility like Spider Man? Or how about the ability to control the weather like Storm from the X-Men?

I wanted to be able to read minds when I was younger. Just imagine the unimaginable power that you would possess. As a single young man, if you wanted to kick game on a young lady, you would have know all the right things to say. If you got in trouble, you would know how to react and what to say in order to escape punishment. If somebody wanted to start a fight with you, before they even threw their first punch you would know it was coming.

Talk about power!

But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that with such an ability would come great problems. What if you read someone's mind and discovered something you really didn't want to know. Matt Parkman in the first season of Heros discovered his wife had cheated on him with his friend and work partner, when he read her mind, and as a result his marriage broke down. Had he resisted the temptation to invade the privacy of her thoughts, what had happened in the past would have stayed there, and he would have continued in ignorant bliss.

Let's look at another scenario. What if your birthday was coming up and your wife/partner/friends were trying to arrange a surprise birthday party for you? You would have robbed them of their happiness in surprising you, and at the same time have lost some of the happiness you would have experienced had you not possessed the ability to read minds. (As I write this, my birthday presents are sitting next to me, but I am not allowed to open them until Monday, and the temptation is proving great. I don't wish to steal my wifes joy of seeing my face when I open it.)

Peter Parker's (Spiderman) Uncle Ben once told him, "With great power comes great responsibility.", and without a doubt that is true, and then it dawned on me. I already have the greatest super power of all; in fact we all do. Every living being that God has created and placed on this earth contains the greatest super power of all; the power of free will.

I sit here now, and I choose not to open the presents that are so nicely wrapped, and calling out "Open me.... Open me... Open meeeeeeeeee". In that choice I exercise the power to affect not just myself, but also someone else. I choose not to provided myself with instant self gratification because it is my responsibility to care about others outside of myself. Perhaps however, this responsibility is small in comparison to the responsibility that Adam and Eve must have carried in Eden. Perhaps they were not aware of the consequences of their actions, perhaps they were not even aware of the full power of the ability that they possessed: The power to choose good or evil.

I guess I will never know what it is like to fly, or be invisible, or even to read minds; but I do know the power that my choices can and do have on other people. So I don't need to fly to be powerful. I don't need to control fire or the elements, I don't need to be able to teleport, I don't need to even be able to read people minds like I wanted to when I was younger, in order to feel powerful or have an influence on people.

My power lies in my choices, and my influence lies in whether I choose to speak life to them. Whether I choose to exercise patience with them. Whether I choose to pick them up when they are down.

Who says I can't be a super hero?