Everyone wants a superpower. Everyone wants something impressive that comes from genes or circumstance or the fact that you came from another planet with stronger gravity and a different kind of sun.
Everyone wants to be able to try something for the first time and be a ‘natural’. Its not just the superheroes that demonstrate this. Its Will Hunting — the idea that you can be born a genius, where things just make sense to you that others have to work all their lives to achieve and still might not get there.
At school there was a kid in my class who spent his entire school career claiming he’d never revised for an exam. His results were never spectacular but every time he said ‘just think what I could achieve if I did revise’. Then he came to his university finals and realized he didn’t have the first clue what to do. And failed.
What’s so wrong about hard work, and getting things wrong and having to try again? What’s wrong with resilience? What’s wrong with not getting it right first time? Doesn’t all the learning come from the struggle? What a boring life if people just kept to the stuff they’re naturally good at? They’re not the people I want to know.
