I once saw a Dustin Hoffman movie\u00a0called \u201cHero.\u201d He played a man who made the first heroic gesture of his life\u00a0when he inadvertently and begrudgingly rescued passengers after a plane crash\u00a0and he disappeared. It was a very popular film because everyone loves a hero. But\u00a0these days, we are programmed to expect more than that. We are expected to love\u00a0a Super Hero. This is what we see in the movies now, beings who have special\u00a0powers beyond normal capabilities, generally known for flight, strength and speed.Batman, Spiderman, Superman, Cat Woman and Wonder Woman.<\/p>\n
I see \u201csuper hero\u201d invincibility in figure skaters, ballet dancers and gymnasts who fly, twist, and put up with pain\u00a0without complaint. Before Covid, I used to work out in a gym for elite female athletes.\u00a0I wasn\u2019t doing gymnastics. My talented trainer, Orlando, just happened to rent
out space and conduct his sessions there and I did a regular person\u2019s workout. I\u00a0have to say that I was slightly intimidated by the little girls when I first\u00a0showed up. I had been an athlete myself when I danced professionally in my\u00a0youth, but that was a long time ago. It didn\u2019t help when one of the girls\u00a0approached Orlando, gestured toward me and asked, \u201cIs that your grandmother?\u201d\u00a0So mean. I was a woman in my sixties being bullied by a teenager. I laughed,the only response that seemed to make sense and I put my attention on my workout.<\/p>\n
Eventually, the girls got used to\u00a0my being there and I loved watching them. While I was doing crunches,\u00a0stretching and lifting light weights, they were walking on their hands, spinning\u00a0on the uneven bars, pushing off the vault, flipping in the air, conquering the\u00a0balance beam, trying to dismount without injuring themselves and practicing a
host of strengthening and agility exercises. During my sessions, any time I\u00a0felt tired or bored, all I had to do was look up and see someone flying through\u00a0the air.<\/p>\n
It was miraculous that they could perform\u00a0the ridiculous things they did on a daily basis. I watched them soar and I watched\u00a0them fall hard hard. I watched them train with a cast on one leg, I saw them\u00a0fall off the beam, bruise their thighs, cry out in pain and frustration and get\u00a0back on the beam. It reminded me of my ballet training. I pretty much grew up\u00a0in a dance studio, practicing all day long, spinning and balancing on the tips\u00a0of my toes, so I felt strangely at home in the gymnastics gym. The competitive\u00a0atmosphere among the girls who were both opponents and friends was familiar to\u00a0me and so was striving for impossible perfection. I performed on a sprained\u00a0ankle and when I had the flu. I performed when I was exhausted from months of\u00a0one night stands, touring across the United States in a bus, crying because I\u00a0was lonely and I felt that I just wasn\u2019t good enough. I starved and bled, leapt\u00a0and pirouetted, stained and sprained, all with a beatific smile on my face.<\/p>\n
The more I watched the girls flying\u00a0high and risking injury, the more I began to see them as super heroes with\u00a0super powers. Performing physical feats like we see in the Olympics is\u00a0profoundly difficult and courageous. It takes a certain kind of person to show\u00a0up every day for hours, get home schooled and endure being put through the\u00a0wringer by their coaches. These are all the earmarks of a present day super\u00a0hero.<\/p>\n
But what about someone who transcends\u00a0the physical and accomplishes mental and emotional feats that are just as\u00a0difficult? Someone in a wheel chair who doesn’t act like a victim. Caring for
someone who is ill or dying. Writing a book, defying the inner critic and taking\u00a0it all the way to \u201cThe End.\u201d Learning to have compassion for yourself. Fighting back\u00a0when someone is intimidating you. Staying present when you’re feeling so\u00a0much, you can hardly stand it. Doesn\u2019t that take super powers, too?<\/p>\n
Whatever you did earlier in your\u00a0life, it can translate into what you’re doing now. When I look beyond the rehearsing\u00a0and performing that I did, when I think about hanging up my pointe shoes, I still\u00a0have the extreme discipline I gained from being a ballet dancer. I never missed
a day of rehearsal in all the years I danced. It was a way of life that I
adopted and ingested and it got me to class every morning. Now it helps me get\u00a0to the computer. It used to keep me in the studio all day. Now it helps me keep\u00a0my butt on the chair. It used to keep me moving when all I wanted to do was lie\u00a0down. Now it keeps me writing whether I feel inspired or not. It used to help\u00a0me dance \u2018til I dropped. Now it helps me conquer writer\u2019s block. It used to\u00a0help me keep a tight schedule, going to bed early and showing up at the studio\u00a0every morning. Now I sleep and eat well, the things that are necessary to live
a good life.<\/p>\n
Great athletes say they are great\u00a0because they work harder than anyone else. It takes the same dedication to be\u00a0good at anything. I\u2019m so used to the discipline I built when I was young,\u00a0sometimes I stop noticing it. But a little mindfulness reminds me, not how good\u00a0I am or that I\u2019m better than anyone else, but rather how grateful I am that I
have something I love to do and I can make a living at it. So few people manage\u00a0it, it feels like a super power.<\/p>\n
If you look deep inside yourself,\u00a0there is a superpower living there, even if you can’t see it. You don’t have to\u00a0be an athlete, a power ranger or a ninja. Most likely, your greatest\u00a0accomplishments are not so dramatic or obvious. But they mean as much. Maybe\u00a0you’re extremely compassionate with other people. Maybe you can listen so well,
it heals someone. Maybe you feed hungry people or you have an extraordinary ability\u00a0to make people laugh in the toughest circumstance like my friend, Rhoni, who\u00a0excels in both.<\/p>\n
In my opinion, the greatest superpower of all, the hardest thing to accomplish is acceptance: Of your life as it\u00a0is. Of how you look. Of how you go about your day. Of letting people be\u00a0themselves. Of sitting in traffic without swearing. Of letting a car in front\u00a0of you slow down without honking your horn. All of the above require discipline\u00a0and super powers to pull off.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s yours?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I once saw a Dustin Hoffman movie\u00a0called \u201cHero.\u201d He played a man who made the first heroic gesture of his life\u00a0when he inadvertently and begrudgingly rescued passengers after a plane crash\u00a0and he disappeared. It was a very popular film because everyone loves a hero. But\u00a0these days, we are programmed to expect more than that. We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2314,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313\/revisions\/2314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}