POV Wednesday – What Doesn’t Kill You…

The theatres are full this summer of comic book movies, each featuring a legendary super hero fighting against the odds to accomplish some big deal or another. Many of them have been around for decades, and the technology we possess now in film making bring them to life with such pizzazz they will be sure to intrigue audiences for decades to come.

Special effects in the movies really make the super heroes’ super powers awesome. Spiderman flying through the skyscraper alleys on his web, Wolverine’s healing ability and very real-looking spikes popping out between his knuckles, Iron Man’s life-sustaining arc reactor embedded in his chest…

It got me thinking.

All of these super heroes with super powers endured great pain in order to receive these powers, and in some cases maintain a level of pain to keep those powers. And often, those powers, while causing pain, also are the source of life.

The super villains also have super powers, again which they obtained through some sort of painful experience – A Spiderman nemesis, Doc Ock, got zapped and his experiment went awry; Victor Von Doom, arch enemy of the Fantastic Four, went through the same cosmic, cell-altering space cloud as they did; and Batman’s foe, Harvey Dent/Two-Face, fell into a leaking vat of acid.

How then, did the heroes become heroes and the villains become villains if they both experienced pain?

It’s the part of perspective I wrote about last week – choice.

The villains allowed the root of bitterness to grow in their hearts in response to pain. The heroes opted to apply the strength they received from the painful experience for good.

All of us experience pain. Toxic situations. Hardships. Faith-building circumstances that make the saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” more than a cliché.

In a sense, the “stronger” part is like obtaining a super power.

Question is, do you use it to become a hero or a villain?

(photos by photobucket.com)