Do we have super powers?

January 2018

I once met a boy who could stop time. Capture a moment and hold it in the palm of his hand, focusing in on the details that might otherwise have become faded and creased as memories do, or lost in time all together left behind somewhere along a mountain range.

I knew a girl who could teleport people to dreams and far away places with the words that came from her pencil. And another who could turn anyone else into the most fascinating person in all the world. She’d do it by asking good questions and listening hard and then she’d watch the person transform before her very eyes.

Do we have super powers? As a matter of fact, I believe that we do.

And if there’s one superpower I’d like to harness within myself, it’s the power to become liquid.

I think the first inclination for many is exactly the opposite—to be solid, like a stone, rolling through life. Over time, the world around them chips away and smooths their edges, shaping them into something that only slightly resembles their previous form. But the process is slow. And the balance is off. They knock down more than they allow to knock at them.

What I’m talking about is a state that’s more fluid, a relationship with the world that’s more dynamic.

Liquids are gentle in their movements but powerful in their impact. They fill the empty spaces around them, both shaping to their surroundings and shaping them. And on the way, their components are ever-rearranging, ever-evolving, defying definitions and simple explanations.

To be liquid doesn’t mean totally losing one’s self and the core aspects of one’s identity in the journey through life, for liquids mold to their environment but never lost their substance; they are comprised of the same components, yet things can mix with them, add to them, make them better. And to be liquid doesn’t mean being powerless to affecting the environment around one’s self, for what’s really more gracefully powerful than an ocean wave?

Rather, to be liquid takes imagination—a superpower in itself. A willingness to pretend, to make believe, to become something new, even if just for today. To listen, to observe, to appreciate, to change. To make all things possible.

Liquidity is life itself. And to harness that would be a superpower indeed.