Humans are the Real Superheroes

The year, 2021 was when I first stepped foot in Mount Zion Institute of Christian Drama. It seems to me that that singular action qualified me for a special course on Talents. Things I never noticed now pop out to me. I don’t think I could ever recover from it either.

I have met such classically talented people that I wonder about God. Humans are born with terrific gifts. What would take others such stress, they do in record time, smiling through it cause it’s fun for them.

Before MZI, I had focused on simply passing exams and going successfully to the next class with my mates. A big no to staying behind. Talk about the shame or beatings if your parents were that type.

When we were little, we were told we had to start thinking about the future. “What would you like to be in the future?” They asked us.

Everyone asked the same question in different ways: “Why?” We were confused. “Why do we have to become something in the future?”

“That’s how you can make money and be respected in society.”

A simple answer yet thousands of previous generations are forever lost because of it and thousands more will join them.

Our teachers answered us. Our elders proved it to us. So, we gave ourselves to study. We were taught everything including Life’s Mathematical Formula for Career Choice.

Country + Grades + Tribe + Parental Desires + Pocket Depth + Little Interest = Career

These days we have more robots with fleshy skins than we know. Perhaps, if the robotic apocalypse Hollywood movies keep predicting should finally happen, there will be less war because they would find us their kindred.

Few humans care about what’s within them anymore. Especially with the situation of the country. We’re in a race to be the richest among our peers. With clenched teeth and red eyes, no one wonders at that treasure deposited inside them from before time. Some later embrace it, others ignore it forever.

The question to the child should have been simpler: “What do you love to do?”

Like I said, my eyes got opened. I understood that I had been given the gift of words. I still feel that I speak less eloquently than required. That’s another reason I have always loved to pen my thought down than say them. I realised I did not choose to read and write those horrible stories of my childhood. It chose me.

As a child, I remember waiting for the holidays to come to a close knowing that our first English Language assignment would be to write an essay on “How I Spent My Last Holiday.”

Hehe, how my classmates would groan! I’d groan too just to fit in. Then I’d smile secretly through it. I didn’t care much about the rules of writing then; I just wanted to tell the story conceived in my head. I read anything that fell within my gaze. Once, my brother saw me reading a signpost and he called me “weird.” To me it was the most normal thing to do – get information, learn something new.

The question to the child should have been simpler: “What do you love to do?”

I’ve met people with a talent for sounds. I’ve heard some musical compositions and I wonder. I remember those with the skill for numbers in my university. These once would put their earpiece on as they swam through theorems. As for me, when I buy things, I expect the seller to tell me my change. I can’t stress my brain, I tell you.

You’ve seen dancers, I know. Have you seen Children dancers? Now, you get this gist. Have you met anybody with the talent for fixing things? I have. They are so interesting to watch.

Those with the talent for expression through pictures strike me every time. Always, I wonder how they can represent real things so identically on paper. One time, my Fine Arts teacher gave us a Continuous Assessment Test. We were to draw the very shoes on our feet. Was he whining me? I did not even stress myself to put in an effort. If you had seen what I drew then, you’d have cried for me. Yet, within those short minutes this guy drew something so identical to his shoes, the whole class marvelled.

There are those with a love for watching things grow. Give them a rake and seeds and you get to watch adults play with sands for free. Then, there are the animal whisperers. They would give their left arm to nurture them. There are thinkers without whom the milestones in sciences and the world would not have been covered.

You should have met business people. I’m not talking about those forced into it by society. I mean the ones that buying and selling is more about the challenge. I’ve read of some that sell their startups, just to get the challenge of starting afresh. Strange, I tell you.

I couldn’t mention them all. I just couldn’t. Some things are even yet to be classified as talents by humans but I tell you, it wasn’t school or study that gave it to them. It may have helped them discover it but it was certainly given.

True, these gifts have to be honed to reach their points of excellence. While doing this, branches of the same core are discovered. It’s such a beauty. I believe even the man with only one talent, if he explored it well, would die a full tree.

Then there are those with multiple talents…two, four, five… We see them and were like, “God, how!” They’re like gods amongst us. I’ll keep repeating myself: “Beautiful!”

While we watched Superman and hungered for the mutant powers in Fantastic Four and X-MEN. All along we were superheroes ourselves. We were the real mutants.

We all have something so divinely planted deep within us that nothing can remove it. Some superheroes lost their powers at some point. But not us. We’re in this forever. Even in our raw form, we’re still awesome.

No child is without a talent. It would be so much better if every child embraced this talent more. Imagine a world without the crazy race for reputation. A world with dignity in labour. A world where parents did not try to disown their children for asking if they could be shoemakers. Dream with me! That would be a world of joy.

Rejoice in what you have been given. Refine it/them. Bask in the joy it gives you as we wait to give account for how we used it.

Ecclesiastes 7:29: This is all that I have learned: God made us plain and simple, but we have made ourselves very complicated.

I soooooooo love hearing from you.