I’d hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but superheroes aren’t real. People don’t have special powers or high-tech gadgets that help them solve everyone’s problems. In the world we live, we are left to deal with our own problems. The complication some of us face, though, is getting the false impression that we are superheroes – that we have been sent here to save the world.
This happens most often when people share issues with you that you wish they hadn’t shared. Issues that, if you care about the parties involved, leave you absolutely speechless – kind of like you have a mouth full of peanut butter, and you can’t move your jaws enough to get meaningful words out. One of the biggest troubles in absorbing everyone else’s problems is pushing aside your own; but the greatest casualty of impersonating a savior is forgetting that for the Dark Knight to rise, he first has to fall.
Many superheroes supposedly wear masks to protect the people close to them. What if I said it was for a different reason? What if – perhaps – superheroes covered their faces to protect themselves? Sure, we all love the unselfishness displayed in the former; but what if masks were meant to protect our “heroes” from failure? So when they neglect to fix everything that’s broken, there’s no face on which to place the blame. The scapegoat is then just some anonymous, overzealous busybody in tights.
When it comes to problems that aren’t our own, therapists are the closest things to heroes. I could never be a therapist. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a great listener, and people often come to me to vent or to get advice about tough situations. But most of the time, I am only able to respond to other people’s problems in one of two ways, and there is no happy medium. The first, and probably a common response, is: “Stop complaining and go do something about it.” The second, and possibly the reason for the absence of superheroes in this world, is feeling that everybody else’s problems are my own and need to be solved accordingly.
Feeling responsible for somebody else’s distress, or even your own, becomes a toxic thing. It could really eat you up inside if you don’t know when to let go. [The Dark Knight Rises spoiler ahead…] Fictional superheroes like Batman even know when to hang up the suit and the mask. Even if it takes faking your own death to avoid cleaning up a mess – letting go and realizing that it’s not your mess to clean up is the best form of catharsis.
I’ve said in many situations that I’d rather feel pain than guilt. Pain isn’t what keeps you up at night – feeling responsible for your own pain or the pain of others is what makes days longer. Guilt, rightfully or wrongfully felt, can destroy the strongest of people – even so-called “superheroes.” We all need our own forms of therapy to rid ourselves of our emotions: writing, a good run, screaming into a pillow, a solid twenty-minute cry, deep breaths, talking it out. Sometimes, we all need someone like Robin Williams to tell us repeatedly that it’s not our fault.
Putting It Into Perspective 