Becoming Superhuman

I declared today on twitter that my new goal for this year is to become superhuman. While I’m generally of the belief that anything I want to do can, and will be done, by the sheer force of my own determination and creativity I don’t think I’ll be bench-pressing any Buicks like Superman anytime soon. In fact, when I say I will become superhuman, I’m talking about the meaning of the word is far more realistic and literal way.

What does the word “superhuman” mean? If you break down its parts, you end up with two root words; “super” (adj.) meaning very good, first rate or, of the highest degree; and “human” (noun) meaning a member of the human race.

Chances are that in your life you’ve come across more than a few superhuman people… I know I have. My grandfather was one of them. He was raised in near poverty and didn’t finish middle school. He enlisted in the army at age 17 and fought in World War II in Europe, first as a paratrooper, then as a tank driver, and then a mechanic when the army realized he had a talent for working with diesel engines.

After the war he took a demotion from Sergeant back to Private to stay in the army to participate in the rebuilding efforts in France. He became a Sergeant again and was in charge of the base’s motor pool where he was stationed. He left the army after my uncle was born, returning to the states with him and my grandmother and became the manager of a local garage. By the time he retired from the workforce he was a director at a regional construction company, in charge of the company’s fleet of cement trucks and construction vehicles.

The man was strong and tough as nails too. I remember him breaking his thumb while working on his car, and after a few choice words set the bone, wrapped it in a dirty rage and kept working. Even well into his 70’s, when you shook his hand, his grip seemed like it was strong enough to crush you. Truth is… he probably could have.

At his funeral there were large collections of photos from his life posted all over the funeral parlor. In fact the photos lines the walls of the parlor, the waiting rooms and the hallways. Everywhere there were pictures of his experiences… images of him in Germany and France during the war, images of him back in Germany and France 50 years later, images of him sailing on the Atlantic, images of him going cross country, and images of him with people I’d never meet in every single one of them. I saw everything that Grandpa had done in his life and suddenly I felt like I was wasting my time.

Comic books and science fiction are one thing, but the real superhuman is the person that by the length and breadth of their experiences, the magnitude of their achievements, and even the grace of their presence invoke in you a feeling of admiration and WANTING to achieve more. These are the sages in our midst, people that sometimes even take on a mystic quality because of the way they seem to both expertly and effortlessly move through and influence our lives. The reason you look up to these people is because they have done things and learned things beyond that of the ordinary human.

The Buddha was superhuman in his compassion for all living things. William Shakespeare was superhuman in his ability to expertly craft words into verses that evoke the greatest of emotional responses. Albert Einstein was superhuman in his ability to see beyond perception and understand the abstract nature of the universe.

There are many more, all of them are superhuman… and I want to be superhuman too.

Great, so what do I do to become superhuman? I struggled with that question for several hours today, trying to figure out what I could possibly do to exceed that of an ordinary human. Some would consider being superhuman based upon a specific skill you do better than anyone else, others would consider it based upon some inherent personality trait that sets you apart from most others. To figure out the necessary step of why I want to be superhuman, I had to think about which of those camps I fell into.

My grandpa was the latter. He had no one skill that set him apart from the rest of humanity. In fact, he was less skilled than most at pretty much everything except for making engines work, and there were those better than him at it as he eventually stopped working on them altogether in favor of managing those that did. Grandpa did have a trait that most people didn’t however… he was so enriched by life and the world around him that he would never settle for any one experience. He fought, he destroyed, he built, he protected, he traveled, he painted, he sailed and he grew with every experience. He could live any one of us under the table, and did.

That’s what I can do to be superhuman… what anyone can do, really. When others say “no” or “why?” I will say “yes” and “why not?” popular opinions, be damned. Endeavor to become fearless in the discovery of life and deriving a meaningful experience from it.

Parts of that mindset had been surfacing recently on their own. When asked by a friend why I had read so many obscure (meaning: boring, to them) books in the last parts of 2010 I replied, “… someone took the time to write them, I may as well read them.”  In the past I never would have even admitted reading them for fear of ridicule. I never again want to let someone else’s opinion sway my decision to do something. The greatest thing I believe you can do to become superhuman is to desire to be master of your own destiny.  That desire is primal in nature, and unfortunately too often given up for the sake of safety, convenience and predictability.

Some people are ok with doing that. I’m not ok with it… not anymore, anyway. I’ll live the rest of this life as well as I can, for my benefit and the benefit of everyone around me… I’ll just have to leave the flying cape on the coat hook at home.

Think about someone that you know, or simply may know about, and how they inspire you to become superhuman yourself. Being superhuman means taking the one chance you have to be more than the sum of your parts. Find out what that is then learn it, love it, do it and live it.