Here Comes Spiderman!
The nights used to be chilling, once upon a time. Yet I wished the sun never rose. I couldn’t bear to go back to school again.
Just the thought of it made my nights even colder.
The cricket-like chattering.
The condescending smirks.
The piercing glares.
The entire world loomed over my shoulders, peeking over it, to revel in my despair.
I wished the nights lasted longer. It never did.
Every morning, I slung my bag over drooping shoulders and mustered up the courage to move forward.
I took a leap of faith; that it will turn out just fine.
Because that’s all life ever is; a leap of faith.
Fortunately, everything ended up just right.
******
Life never turns out the way you expect it to. Just ask my favourite superhero/comic book character/ fictional character of all time, Spiderman.
We all know the now-iconic words: “With great power, comes great responsibility”. Just hearing these words remind me of a Ben Parker, slowly bleeding to his death, in his nephew’s arms.
I like to think of the journey of Spiderman in three phases.
In the beginning, he was just another teenager. A nerd we could find everywhere. The kid everyone picked on. The kid who had a crush on someone way out of his league. The kid who was just trying his best to fit in.
And when his mind finally broke, when his heart shattered to glass pieces, and his soul lost itself to the darkness, he picked up a camera. And slowly, he saw a whole new world, looking through that camera lens.
Before, all the faces he saw only frowned when they saw him.
Now, through his camera lenses, it became a world of smiles and laughter.
He started using photography as a coping mechanism.
As his fingers pressed on the capture button, he was capturing the fleeting moments of happiness he wished he had his entire life. And just as he was capturing things he wished he could see through the lens of his eyes instead of the lens of his camera, the spider bit him.
And it all changed.
Enter phase two.
He became arrogant and self-serving. He saw his powers as a boon. Peter Parker was no longer the nerd we all knew, he announced to the world through his actions.
He wrestled. Beat the jocks at their own games. And he experienced an adrenaline rush he never had in his life. And one day, because the owner of a wrestling tournament didn’t pay him his prize money, he refused to stop the owner from being robbed. Peter couldn’t see the worth of sacrificing his pride and wanted karma to be served.
“Not my problem,” He smirked and said. But soon enough, it became his problem. The robber murdered his uncle in cold blood. All because Peter Parker refused to sacrifice.
And from there, Spiderman was born.
The great power Ben Parker quoted wasn’t about the superpowers that the spider bite gave Peter. Instead, it was the recognition of his responsibilities.
Spiderman sacrificed his life as Peter Parker, to help the people. While as Spiderman he fought against supervillains, as Peter Parker he had to fight for his daily survival. He had to choose between paying for electricity and housing bills or saving people.
Peter Parker embraced the consequences of his actions and stopped running away from his problems.
He had no one else but himself.
Yet he faced everything that came his way with a witty smile.
It was all a gigantic leap of faith.
One that he took gladly.
Watching the original Raimi duology (I’ll be pretending that the third movie never happened), I always get stuck in a philosophical loop.
Here was someone just like me. No, he probably had it worse than almost every one of us. He had to sleep at night, knowing that he could have stopped the death of one of the few people to have loved him.
He had to fight his inner demons, kill the father of his best friend, witness the death of his mentor turned villain, and still go back to swinging through the streets to help people.
He took photos of himself, which were used to fuel the propaganda of him being the biggest menace in the city, just to fill his stomach.
I’ve watched plenty of superhero movies and comics. Never have I ever felt that a hero was one of us mortals. They always had Mary Sue elements to them. But Spiderman? He’s always been my homie. He’s the one who taught me about the power of sacrifice, the courage that an ordinary nerd can have, and the one who taught me to always take a leap of faith.
While other heroes made me fantasise about the technology they have at hand like Iron Man, their intellect like Batman or the general superpowers like Superman, Spiderman always taught me about embracing responsibilities.
No matter how humongous the challenges in front of you might seem, even if it seems like the entire world is out for you, what really makes you an authentic hero is suiting up and facing it.
It’s all about making the right choices, even if it hurts you. Spiderman taught me that you become a hero when you give up the things that matter to you.
Being a hero is about making difficult decisions even if they don’t necessarily lead to the best outcomes for you, and embracing them.
You know that you are a hero when you can say no to the girl that you have loved for years, just for her safety.
You know that you are a hero when you can give up your life to do greater things. Out goes the fun, out go the parties, and the only thing left is serving a higher purpose.
And I personally think that is how we can all become heroes too.
World watch out because here come the spider people!
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