“Four or five moments–that’s all it takes to become a hero. Everyone thinks it’s a full-time job. Wake up a hero. Brush your teeth a hero. Go to work a hero. Not true. Over a lifetime there are only four or five moments that really matter. Moments when you’re offered a choice to make a sacrifice, conquer a flaw, save a friend, spare an enemy. In these moments everything else falls away” Colossus, member of the superhero team The X-Men (from Deadpool 2).
Sure, it would be great to have superpowers, and maybe someday you will get bitten by a radioactive spider or be given a magical medallion. Who knows, stranger things have happened.
But for now, think carefully about the words of Colossus and the message St. Francis was trying to convey to you on Tarnax. Anyone can be a superhero. What it really takes is a desire to do good.
So as you finish this unit, think carefully about what you’ve learned. During the pandemic, you’ve spent weeks and weeks cut off from the rest of the world. We all have. The question now is, when we can finally go back to our world, are we going back to the old world or a new one? Are you going back as an ordinary person or are you going back better, changed, maybe even heroic. You have a choice to make. You can stay the same or you can become a different person. You can choose to do good. You have the ability to do that. Maybe that means being nicer to the people around you. Maybe that means helping others. Maybe that means becoming a doctor or a nurse or a teacher. Maybe that means volunteering. It’s up to you. You have the power to do so much good in the world. And with great power comes great responsiblity.
Write a letter to a child you will meet in the future. Perhaps it will be your own child or perhaps it will be the child of someone close to you, but either way it should be someone important to you. Tell them the following things:
- Briefly, what happened during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020.
- What you learned about yourself during lockdown.
- How you decided to make the world a better place when regular life returned.
- The role you wanted faith to play for you in that life in which you chose to do good.