Today I woke up with an extra superpower.
I don’t know how long it will last.
It is a superpower of invisible translation.
Showing me the secret hidden essence of good that lives inside each thing that I encounter, whether I like that thing or not.
Like this:
The soap shaped like a leaf means GROW and EXPAND.
The annoyingly preachy Save Mother Earth sign that someone put in my space is really about CARING.
The lamp that doesn’t work has the secret message of ADAPTABILITY. It’s saying, try things.
The trickle of water in the background is humming FLOW.
The exasperated-sounding sigh of the person next to me has its secret truth too: RELEASE.
In the mirror.
I look in the mirror and hear what X would say: “That’s what you’re wearing? At least put a jacket on. You look like a hooker.”
But instead of going into the usual rounds of anger/shame/resentment, the superpower kicks in.
So I still hear the unkind words but I also find their core. Much like my fuzzball monsters, this person desperately wanted SAFETY for me but didn’t know how to say that in a loving and supportive way.
I take in SAFETY and PROTECTION and let the rest — the trappings of bitterness and blame — fall away.
And I inhale COMFORT and FAITH as well: remembering that I will never again live with anyone who speaks to me like that.
Remembering.
Not sure what triggers this one. I hear the voice of my friend who is dead. This happens every day.
He says, as he always said, it’s all for the best.
And instead of raging against him and resisting his words (how dare you say it’s for the best when you left me like that?!), I see the sweet center of his belief that I did not share:
HOPE. And FAITH.
I fill up on these and add them to today’s superpowers. Who knows? They might come in handy tomorrow.
The poorly worded sign.
I take it for what it is. A sign.
I release the finger-wagging tone and the threatening words and take in its purpose: SAFETY and PROTECTION again.
Loss.
At first when this new superpower showed up the first thing I felt was the grief and fear of potential loss:
What will happen when it’s gone? Who will I be when I have lost this ability?
But then I saw that for what it is: a monster-fear, combined with the belief and experience that good things don’t stick around.
What if that doesn’t need to be true anymore? This is what I whispered to the trees.
And then I saw the essential good inside of the grief and fear: SUSTAINABILITY.
So I’m taking that.
And something else.
I’m also trying to remember that this is not just a superpower. It’s another destuckification technique that I can consciously use when I need it.
Like finding signs. Or noticing the noticings. It’s a way of being the fox in the video game.
It’s something I can practice. I can enter it into the Book of Me. It’s something I can get back to through Shiva Nata or through yoga or through breathing my way there. And remembering.
And comment zen for today.
Superpowers, like tiny sweet things, can sometimes be kind of fragile. We tread gently. We explore without pushing.
This is pretty personal stuff that I’m sharing, and it’s very likely that other personal stuff will be shared by people in the comments.
As always, we respect that vulnerability by giving it space and love. So we don’t offer unsolicited analysis of someone’s situation and we don’t tell each other what to do or how to feel.
If you want to try on today’s superpower, you are welcome to it. Part of the magic of superpowers is that invoking a power that appeals to you in no way diminishes someone else’s supply of it.
And if you want to share bits and pieces of your experiment in finding the essence (or thoughts on this process and how hard it can be), that would be lovely.
Love love love to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads.
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I had a hard morning with lots of insecurity monsters that have a lot of fear of betrayal and abandonment. So I really needed this at this moment. I’m a lot calmer now, in the park with the dog, but I think I need to review my book of me and maybe make an addendum. These monsters really snuck up on me this morning and caught me unawares!
Much love to you and Selma and all the commenters and lurkersts. <3
Wow.
I have had this power, from time to time, or something very similar to it. Sometimes I can invoke the power to see significance and possibility in everything around me, to hear the secret messages of comfort and inspiration that everything whispers.
One of these days, maybe soon, I want to write a blog post about the day when, for a few hours, I believed in the possibility that cats might paint — that cats might engage in a process of creating art. It felt extraordinary, being able to contain and sustain that belief, for the time that it lasted, until someone started asking me questions about it and the feeling dissolved like an exquisite, delicate bubble.
Let’s see, though. Here and now, I want to try out your new superpower.
Heavy, humid air in this office has an essence of SWIMMING and FLOATING, which evoke feelings of being supported by my surroundings.
Annoying lawnmower noise outside my window has qualities of WAVES — ebb and flow.
Suddenly, I can believe in the possibility that everything I love about being at the beach is available to me in the moment, here and now!
Thank you, Havi. Thanks for so generously sharing your superpowers, and thank you for reminding me that it’s safe to share my own.
I love the way you talk about your friend who is dead. I have a little cousin who is dead. He would now be twenty. I think.
I think he’s left many gifts behind. I don’t know what they are yet, but perhaps they are
Love
Closer connection with family
freedom
comfort
Oh, this is truly beautiful, Havi. What a wonderful perspective to gain, and even more wonderful to share. I’ve been experiencing some internal emotional upheavals based on a decision I made, and I am finding myself putting some considerable effort into remaining present and not dwelling and dig-thinking. This helps. I am not there yet, but it definitely helps.
Havi, this is so beautiful! (oops, echoing risa there – and I suspect we won’t be the last people to say it 🙂
It reminds me of your take on ‘always doing one thing’, relating everything you do to the process somehow. I’m totally going to try and adopt this.
I feel awkward about saying this when I’m so far behind you, but I’m really getting a buzz out of watching you grow. Even though you almost never talk directly about your spirituality, and even though we’re of different religions, I srsly think I know God better from reading your blog. The way you see the world just keeps getting more and more loving and alive and creative and you keep finding joy and goodness and beauty in the craziest places, and it’s all completely non-forced and non-icky. Thank you. 🙂
Hi Havi,
Thank you for sharing your wonderful experience my superhero friend. You sound like you are beginning to reside in a reality that is trying to free you of that “voice” that holds a thing. There is no voice and there is no power until you make it so, make it so as a superpower, but this is always. I will say this is not to be used as a technique for you will make “it” a thing, a separation, did you make it a thing today?
I am just wondering out loud….thanks.
Havi, keep shining bright everyone will see your light.
zero+bliss
Mark
This sounds like the most awesome superpower!!
The Super Power of Seeing The Good
It seems related to perception in combination with a belief that there are many good intentions all around.
Love love love from a lurker!
Thank you for this post! This is a great superpower.
I am very happy for you that your friend who is dead gives you such reassuring messages. So does mine.
That is the most super of all superpowers. Sustaining the ability to see the good (both objects and living things) would transform every moment of every day.
Thankyou for your beautiful words, and for providing the inspiration to try to cultivate more awareness and appreciation of the powerful life lessons all around us.
Cat
I would love that superpower also… it’s something I have been trying to find for a few years now to try to counteract the negativity I was raised with!
But this is one of those things where ‘meeting yourself where you are’ seems like sometimes it would have a run-in with this superpower, like this:
I was making a u-turn on an empty, small street so that I could park in the shade. as I was doing it, someone turned onto the street. He had plenty of room to pass me, but instead, he waited, specifically pulled up next to me and said ‘great idea, b****’ –
I felt, not exactly threatened, but it was such an aggressive and angry act *for no reason* – it’s stuck with me for a couple of days because it was so icky…and I can’t seem to find any hidden good there.
Also – have you seen http://thxthxthx.com/ ? An entire website (and now book) of a woman who has this superpower – she’s really helped me with practicing this!
xS
I think I discovered something similar yesterday whilst feeling tired and harried and like my very recent holiday never happened.
I remembered to breathe, deeply in and fully out and then it didn’t matter that I had to walk fast or do 100 things, I was just breathing, slowly, and the world went by, as it does.
This would seem to be the quality of the trees… planting myself firmly with my breath, into right here and now. With the world swirling madly by and it being no matter, because here is my breath – in … and out.
I had a moment of sort-of-this, today, when I discovered the reason I’ve been frustrated with my best friend lately.
She got out of an abusive situation, a few months ago, and right now she is a tiny sweet fragile thing finding her feet again.
Which is a good thing. But looking at her is like looking in a mirror at all of the vulnerable parts of *me* that make me scared and angry, because I was in her place a good number of years ago. Some of my Things are better than they were, but some of them are only better hidden, and looking at them hurts.
So she’s been getting a lot of my bad feelings about myself that I didn’t know I still had. And I feel just awful about that, because I’ve been kind-of-hating such a tiny, sweet thing inside of both of us.
*But.* I’m hoping that since I can love on her, now that I remember she’s a person and not a mirror, it will work backwards, too.
And that would be kind of cool.