Empty Bucket

One of the most basic and almost boring questions that all of us ask when we meet someone new is what superpower they wish they had. It seems harmless, but it can tell so much about what someone sees and what they normally think about. There will be a few straight-forward answers, a few that completely change the way you see the person, and a few that just don’t seem to make sense. Of course, there will be one extremely intelligent person who will say that if they could choose a superpower, they would simply choose to be able to choose all of them. This is the same person who would get an affordable car but deck it out with everything top-model. It isn’t to say that this person is cheap, but more efficient.

Is that not the main goal of humanity? Efficiency and maximisation? Is that not the superpower we all end up actually needing? Yet it seems more complex than flying. It seems more difficult than being invisible, even though the other two are essentially impossible in the real world. How is it that the simple act of being able to achieve more with less seems so daunting? Almost scary? Even after everything we see around us about how people’s stories begin from nothing and go up until almost everything, Why is it that most of us fear taking that risk? The risk of making more, doing more, and achieving more Why does that fear persist? Has the world become so comfortable that more seems like such an ask?

Satisfaction comes earlier than it ever used to, and the flow of concentration and progress takes more breaks than ever. How has this happened to the species that was meant to take the planet by storm? Is that we have become complacent. Too many factors matter now; too many problems could arise; or maybe too many things are controlled by too few of us. That is when I began thinking about what I should actually answer this question with. Not being annoying to say everything, yet understanding why everything would be the better choice. In this well of confusion, I finally pulled my bucket back out, only to find it empty.

So does that mean that the best superpower is to have none at all? What sense does that make? Absolutely none, it seemed at first. Yet, the empty bucket was not something that the well left empty to remove something; it was an opportunity given to add something back to the well. That is where the biggest superpower in my mind became the ability to add value. Or maybe I just overthought an empty bucket.