No Capes

Sometimes you find yourself sitting in a library, waiting on some vital information for your schooling to refresh on the computer so you can take the next important step in your education, and suddenly, out of no where, a phrase from a Pixar movie pops into your head:

"No capes!"

Don't you hate it when that happens?

Oh, it doesn't happen to you?  What is wrong with me, you ask?  That is a question for the ages, my dear reader.  A question for the ages....

Then I wonder what it would be like to be a superhero.  What power would I have?  Invinciblity?  Super strength?  The ability to read people's minds?

While it would be so ever cool to be able to stop a speeding bullet with my teeth (which, maybe I can, I just haven't ever tried it to be honest), I think I would want one simple, but very powerful...uh, power:

The ability to stop bad things from happening.

It would be such a great power to be able to stop people from losing their jobs, from losing their homes, from making that one small error that turns into a tragedy.  I would love to stop natural disasters, bad luck, and poor timing.  I'd kick Murphy's Law straight in the groin. 

But then I think back about the bad things that have happened to me.  I think about when I was 18 and my family went through the simultatious loss of baby, financial stability, home, and family unit.  I think about my husband joining the army and having pretty much everything go wrong with the house while I was alone.  I think about our split and divorce, the loss of my home, my job, my horses, and then losing Layla and Eddie and having to deal with destroying them, again, alone.  I think about my recent bought with underemployment and my struggle to, well, try everything I can not to lose the little that I have left.  I think about all these trials, and while it would be easy to wish they had never happened, I would not have the perspective I have right now without them.

I think, it's not so much about trying to keep bad things from happening, but more about what can come out of these trials.  We can become angry and bitter, which I honestly have gone through and while it is perhaps the easiest route, it certainly isn't the most contructive one.  The other choice we have is that we can learn.  We can look back, push the emotion aside (while not getting rid of it, because it is still important to embrace emotional learning as well), and look at our past with open arms.  What things went right?  What can we do better next time?

We don't need to be super heros.  We don't need capes.  We all have the power inside us to make a future that we want.  It just takes time...and perhaps a little bit of super-strength optimism.

Onward and Upward,
~J