On Becoming a Super - Part 6: Three Strong Words
March 5, 2020

    Three of the most important words in the superhero's toolkit are "I don't know."  They're especially effective when followed by something like, "I don't know the answer to that question, but I can find out – or I can find someone who does know the answer."  Or something like, "I don't know what we should do in this situation, but let's think through it together.  We can figure this out."  Or something like, "I don't know what it feels like to be in your shoes right now, but I can walk beside you for a while if you would like some extra support."  

    You see, a superhero is someone who is responsible – that is, someone who is able to respond to needs around them.  This kind of responsibility is most readily exercised by those who are practicing the virtues, minimizing their vices, and making space for new possibilities by letting go of the need for certainty, by learning to embrace ambiguity in life.  Yet these practices, noble and necessary as they are, are not the chief aim of superhero practice; they are only the enabling conditions.  The chief aim of superhero practice is to set a small corner of the world right when it has fallen victim to evil, apathy, or entropy, to the extent such setting right is possible.  And the superhero life is the life of doing this over and over and over.  In other words, the chief aim of superhero practice and superhero life is to engage in the making and maintenance of a just and beautiful order, out of or against the backdrop of chaos (both the naturally occurring kind of chaos and the kind manufactured by human error or malevolence).

   And to engage in this way requires some softness, some pliability, some vulnerabilty.  Such engagement requires strength too, of course, and great courage.  But strength that lacks a supple core is just brute force.  And there can be no courage without reckoning with fear, only recklessness.

    "I don't know" is how you retain your supple core, how you reckon with fear – both your own fears and the fears of others.  "I don't know" signals solidarity with those whom you have been given the privilege of assisting.  It is the doorway to all the possibilities for confronting and transforming the chaos that has emerged, is emerging, and will emerge.  "I don't know" makes you nimble, gives you options, gathers your allies to the huddle and empowers them as your fellow supers.

    When someone in your orbit asks, "How will we get through this?" the superhero answer is, "I don't know, but I have some ideas.  Let's figure out what works."