We are not superheroes, thankfully

We’d like to be! These days, every other movie is about super something or other. The main idea of a superhero is that something dramatic and unlikely happens to you and then zap! You get these superpowers. They’re yours. Forever. You don’t have to do anything – other than decide what to do with them and how this will change your life. With great power comes great… anything.

We almost believe it. When we practice a skill, for work or fun, we have the secret hope that, at some point, say 10,000 hours as the myth goes, the skill becomes a superpower: it’s there, always, instinctively, at your service.

Truth is…??nothing ever works like this. Practice is about preparation for when you need to use a skill. But in real life, how often do we find ourselves in a situation where we should’ve known better, reacted better, done better – but didn’t? Emotions get in the way. Context is complicated. Skill in practice is often no match for skill on the spot.

Because know-how requires intent. Take meditation: one practices to react less emotionally, less violently, less extremely in situation. You can sit for hours focusing on in-breath and out-breath and hoping this will turn you into a buddha – and still completely lose it the first time someone calls you an idiot.

Buddhist practitioners know this well. I remember an experienced meditator joking about the lama meditating for days and days in a cave. A passerby asks this lama what he’s meditating on. “Patience” the lama answers. “That’s a load of bollocks,” says the man – and the lama gets immediately angry and chases him out of the cave yelling at him not to come back and disturb his meditation.

One meditates, they tell me, to find a short space between stimulus and emotional reaction. Or to learn techniques to regain one’s emotional balance quickly after being thrown by something off-putting.??As with any skill, practice is not enough – you also need?intent. Without it, no matter how many hours you’ve put into meditating, you’ll still react like the next guy.

One way to look at our self-efficacy is as deliberate learning curves. What is the shortlist of skills we’re currently trying to apply in order to better ourselves. This allows us to practice exercises to try and acquire new skills. Clearly it counts.

But not as much as the determination to mobilize this learning on the spot. We need to want to do it better when the situation suddenly applies. When the context is not quite perfect. When it’s hard, not easy. Skill is half the battle. Will wins the war.

And this can be heroic, as some situations can really test all your will and patience. When criticism gets to you, obstacles wear you down, or sheer tiredness makes you feel none of this is worth the trouble. Being heroic means mobilizing intent, and then realizing that we have the skills to stand and step up to the challenge. Never enough skill, never quite the right skill, but enough to take the first step and then the second.

Intent can never be taken for granted. It's not something that we have or have not. Will needs to be mustered. Gathered up from inside. Projected forward into the world. Intent yesterday doesn't translate into intent today - it's not habit forming. Which is why accomplishment over time, over odds, over obstacles is so deeply moving and deserving respect.

To be heroic, we need to abandon our childish dreams of becoming superheroes. It never really gets easier, because the world changes and the next ball thrown at you is not the way you’d prepared. But still some wisdom accrues, some mental flexibility that allows you, passed the early stage of dismay, to have an angle, to double-guess yourself, get the thinking engine started and go beyond reaction to action.

It’s okay not to be superheroes. It gives us a chance to exist, not just to function. To grow, not just to be. And yes, awareness and wisdom do accrue, even though ever so slowly. They’re no superhero powers, but do give a deeper dimension to our being, and, if we follow that path and are lucky, we can rediscover true courage. Name a greater power?