Up, Up and Away!

When I’m on my way to work in the morning, I pass the line of people waiting to purchase tickets to see Spiderman, Turn off the Night.  When I’m on my way home, I see the “Sold Out” notice outside the theatre.  The show is apparently doing something right, despite reports that it is a production nightmare.

In 1966, when It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane…It’s Superman! opened on Broadway, it closed a little over three months later. It’s risky to attempt such an epic project as a live performance.  Special effects are such an integral part of the storytelling.  Maybe superheroes just don’t belong on stage.

I love my superheroes, but do I really want them flying around above my head on unstable trick wires? I don’t know.  My Ceddy Senses are tingling. I think I feel safer when they’re saving the day on the big screen, larger than life or swinging through the pages of a colorful comic book.  There is a time and a place for everything…even a hero, and that includes the heroes in our every day lives.

Mom and Dad may have been your heroes for teaching you values and other important life skills and quite possibly from saving you from financial ruin – just in the nick of time.

Your best friend may have been your hero because of her fabulous ability to accessorize faster than a speeding bullet. 

However, while your high school coach was your hero on the playing field, he or she probably doesn’t have any business acting as your champion in the arena of personal relationships.  Actually, if you’re still calling him for advice after all these years you don’t need a hero, you need to make some friends.

We sometimes expect too much of our relationships.  Sometimes, we shouldn’t expect anything at all.  After a while, Mommy and Daddy need to hang up their capes, and you need to find the means to pay your own rent.  We need to view our relationships in realistic terms and assign them proper roles in our lives. We cannot expect everything from anyone.  If we do, we set ourselves up for disappointment and failure.

To become more self reliant, we should move away from hero worship and cast our attention to solid, dynamic role models.  They are not the larger than life heroes of our youth, but they are people whose accomplishments and character we can appreciate and realistically strive to achieve.    They set a good example for us.  They do not, however, promise to swoop in and save the day. We become our own heroes.

Saving the world is Spiderman’s job, and he seems to be doing so besides a number of setbacks and technical difficulties.  Maybe next we’ll be lucky enough to see The Man of Steel: Return to Broadway.  Until then, I should probably go and stand in line before Spidey sells out. 

Cheers,

Ceddy

(Simon Kirby's Major Triumph appears courtesy of Public Domain Superheroes at www.pdsh.wikia.com)