A Superpower or a Challenge?

Or perhaps both depending which angle we see it from?

I recently borrowed my dad's lovely Volvo XC70 to go away to teach for the weekend. My car is getting older, is slightly more battered, particularly after someone drove into me - then drove off - on another teaching weekend. And so when I got the 'we'd like you to borrow our car' text the morning that I left, what else was there to say but 'thank you, that sounds great'?

Last time I borrowed my dad's car - the one before this, the clutch went strange.. so for everyone around me saying (OK just my partner) about how reliable my dad's car was, I did have a moment - mine, though it may rattle (according to our garage, the Peugeot 308s were built to rattle), it has not yet let me down once.

Anyway, a wonderful weekend of teaching passed at The School of Homeopathy, then I was to drive to my friend Jen's concert in Glastonbury, staying there for two nights with a fab friend, then home.

Driving to Glastonbury the car felt a bit odd on a couple of occasions but I pondered that it was because I was tired so I pulled over and stopped for a rest. I would add that I come from the 'oooh the car sounds a bit strange... let's turn up the music' school of mechanicing; my knowledge around all things car is pretty woeful really.

And so back on the road, mostly it felt OK with a couple of moments of 'hmmm, what was that?' And then I was pretty sure that I realised. It was equipped with a great power. It's a manual gearbox, but this one, if I accelerated a bit harder in one gear, it would drop down and give the extra boost... a bit like an automatic would do.

I had a fabulous time in Glastonbury and was really grateful for amazing connections and magic unfolding there. And then drove home. And I knew it. The car had a superpower. If I needed extra power it did it. Without me needing to change gear, I just accelerated a bit more. I was impressed to tell my dad about this great feature he'd never known about.

After which he promptly got in touch with garages to book it in so that the slipping clutch could be fixed...

It's had me pondering. If I'd have driven it home thinking it was broken, kaput, unreliable, I'd have driven it with fear and concern, and would have worried thought the 250 miles to home. As it was I drove happily, excited to share my discovery - and listening away to the Telepathy Tapes. It was a long drive, which felt so much shorter thanks to 5 episodes of what has to be one of the most mindblowing podcasts I've encountered.

It fits, looking back on the time with the clutch fun, I think into the theme - the abilities that the kids and adults discussed on The Telepathy Tapes have are extraordinary. Remarkable, and I'm pretty sure we mere mortals could class them as superpowers. And yet, many of us could look upon the challenges some people have and dismiss them. It's not always easy to put ourselves in others' shoes.

30 years ago I volunteered with physically differently abled people at a respite centre for the first time and I saw first hand how someone could ask a question, for example with a spelling board, I could speak it for them, and say, a shop keeper could respond with the answer - addressed to me. I really didn't care mostly about the thimbles that were availble, I was merely happy to be a conduit for someone who did. Or how we might not even be able to get into that shop because there were two steps up to the front door, or once in how we might not be able to walk around it because the aisles were so close together.

Sometimes our challenges could be seen to override our superpowers because the world was set up differently - in this instance for walking people, or with an assumption of non comprehension in terms of speaking an answer to me. The number of times I've heard someone shout an answer louder at someone who was in a wheelchair... their legs may not have worked but their hearing was great.

Merlin Sheldrake talks in his book Entangled Life, about how the world is often seen from a plant centric point of view when discussing fungi for example. How we view the world from a human, neurotypical (though I'm seriously questioning the validity of that term - perhaps less diverse but within the realm of 'typical' there is so much diversity), able bodied perspective is so damning to so many fellow humans for starters, but also the amazing flora and fauna we get the privilege to co-exist with.

I believe we are living the most extraordinary existence, surrounded by daily magic and stopping for a moment to consider the superpowers we all can tap into - love, kindness, empathy for others - towards our fellow human and non-human beings along the way - are several that are high on my list.

So is something a superpower or challenge - and how would we approach anything if we could see the good in it? See the wonder? The everyday magic? The potential? I think it could be different, less fearful, with more curiosity. I think it's worth an experiment. I'll report back later... Love to know what you think.

With joy,

Em x