On Superpower

Last week at the Grand Meetup (you can read a bit more about what it is and why it is happening here and here), in my public speaking class I had to do a short talk to answer the question: “If you could choose one single superpower, what would it be?”

Although things like being invisible or printing loads of money would be nice, my superpower request would be to stay authentic. Because these days it is truly a superpower. We often do so many things because “that’s the way the society works”, or “that’s how they usually do it”, or “because we don’t do it here that way” (reference to the never-ending argument in our Canadian-European family: backstory – I don’t want the Canadian basement but apparently they don’t do it differently in Canada, or that’s what they say), or “because what they will think of me”. There are so many “they” in there and so little “I” –  you get the idea. But on the top of that, we also keep on getting tons of information flushed over us every day – social media, media, news – the technology around us is architectured in the way that makes us lose the “I”.

And it becomes truly hard to be the “authentic you” because you simply can’t see “you” anymore. It takes courage to be you.

I recently finished “21 Lessons For The 21st Century” by Yuval Harari and one of my main takeaways from the book is that we can hardly envision the future in 50 or 100 years and we have no idea what turn the technological developments will take – our world develops much faster than before. The best thing that we can do to prepare for the future though is to learn to know ourself as individuals – what’s important to YOU, what works for you, what makes you passionate and excited. So let me leave you with this quote from the book:

So if you want to know the truth about the universe, about meaning of life, and about your own identity, the best place to start is by observing […] and exploring what it is.