Two thought provoking questions often asked are:
1. "What would you do if you won the lottery?"
2. "What would you choose to have as your superpower?"
Now before you laugh at the absurdity of the questions, especially in this time of covid, consider how revealing your answers would be. They are important markers regarding our values and our motives. What if we have to share them with others and we realise that we want to hide who we really are ... and what we really want!
For instance if you list all the things you want to do, where to go when given lottery funding, as opposed to making charitable donations or investing to make more money, it says a lot about you. Or maybe it is just what we have been programmed to think of as important. And if you change your list to show others how "enlightened" you are ... well that is certainly a contradiction in terms!
For full disclosure, I won £30.00 on the lottery last Wed and spent it on a back and neck massage on Thursday. Yep, that says a whole lot about me
As for superpowers. What would you like? Invisibility, ability to fly, time control ...
If the past 6 months have taught us anything, it is to appreciate the ordinary. To value the heroes, not the super heroes. Those include:
Support workers who work tirelessly for the good of others.
Family and friends who are our own personal support workers.
Shopkeepers and their staff who keep the wheels of the essential food industry turning.
Teachers who want to interact with their pupils, share their knowledge and change lives.
... and so on. Our list gets longer as we realise what our lives would be like if there was no refuse collection, no mail delivery, no farmers, no fishermen, no healthcare, no tradesmen.
Two or my "ordinary" heroes when I was a teenager at school shaped my whole adult life.
My English teacher taught me to love writing, to read as many genres of books as I could and to open my eyes and ears to the power of debate, not argument.
A school friend's mother was a physiotherapist, and her example of professional care and expertise inspired me to embrace the same profession.
Neither of these people had any other motives in their careers than to be able to work at their chosen profession. They weren't striving to reach the top of their professional tree, or to think how their behaviour affected others ... they were happy with their day to day workload and their everyday lives. They had what is now termed as a "work/life balance".
They were ordinary people leaving an extraordinary legacy and myself and many others have much to thank them for ...
So I am going to ask you a different question:
"What is your ordinary power, one you under-appreciate, one that could change lives?"
Is it the ability to be resolute or alternatively, be flexible? Do you have focused thought or are you a free spirit? Is your nature loving, generous, thoughtful? Are you reliable, trustworthy, honest, kind, brave?
... and would winning the lottery make you any of the above? because any one of them could be the superpower you are looking for!
Finishing with a couple of photos of some of my very own super heroes... can you guess who they are?
