No One Is Coming To Save You…

Look up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane! No, it’s Superman!

Superman. He is the blueprint for heroes in the 20th and 21st centuries. He is charismatic, stoic, and strong. Superman is the kind of person you’d want around on your worst day. Because you know he would make it better. He is the person you’d want near you when a building is collapsing. Because you know he’d stand between you and the falling rubble, no questions asked.

I’ve come to believe Superman didn’t start out as just a comic book idea. Of course, if you trace his origin back before the cape and the “S” on the chest, before Krypton, Smallville, and Clark Kent, even before the underwear above the pants, you will find a forgotten version of him. He wasn’t a hero. He wasn’t even good.

In 1933, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster wrote a short story titled The Reign of the Super-Man. In it, Superman was a man named Bill Dunn, a down-on-his-luck vagrant chosen by a mad scientist to be the subject of an experiment. Bill Dunn was given immense telepathic and physical powers against his will, but Bill doesn’t rise to the responsibility given to him by the great powers. He becomes power-hungry, manipulative, and eventually mad. He uses his abilities to escape poverty, dominate others, and serve himself. In the end, he loses everything. His powers fade, and he returns to obscurity.

That was the first Superman.

And yet, this version still speaks to something raw and human. This version feels more real. Bill Dunn’s Superman is the Superman we see every day. We have seen it happen. A Dunn-like character, a down-on-his-luck normal person, receives a windfall, and suddenly, they are now power-hungry and greedy. Dunn is what power looked like to someone who has had none. Someone who has the ability to change your circumstances by force.

But as Siegel and Shuster refined the idea to create the comics, something shifted. Superman transformed from a dark vision of self-serving survival into a beacon of altruism. A protector. A friend. A hero. He became the imaginary friend a lonely child might invent. Not to conquer, but to save. Not to dominate, but to stand between you and the danger that could be your bully, or an accident, or a falling building, or fighting parents. Superman was someone who would appear at your worst moment and say, “I’ve got you.” That’s the Superman we came to know.

I fully believe that he was born out of a deep, almost desperate yearning to be powerful enough to survive. To matter. To be rescued from a life that felt too heavy to carry alone. As someone needing to be saved,  you would stare up at the sky and see this man in vibrant primary colours, underwear over his pants, descending like a guardian angel. A hero to fend off bullies, silence the chaos at home, or just offer companionship on the loneliest days.

As a child, I used to build elaborate stories in my head, fantasies of escape. I used to walk around my neighbourhood and wonder if a kind stranger would spot me on the street and take me to a big house with many rooms and feed me chicken and ice cream every day. I wanted so much for someone to see through the loneliness I wore like a second skin. These days, in my singleness, I I’d notice a man watching me and wonder: Is he the one? Or is there just something in my teeth?

We are a species that has been programmed to look skyward, unfortunately. To seek help from beyond ourselves. It’s why we believe God is in the sky. It’s why we pray upward, wish upon stars, and tell stories about heroes descending from above. Somewhere deep down, we’re always wondering: Who will pull me up from where I have fallen?

But looking upward can only take us so far. What if we tried something more radical? Something more terrifying?

Looking inward.

Yes, many of the obstacles and challenges and problems we face come from outside ourselves. Things like systems, people, and chance. But often, buried beneath the fear and the noise, we have the strength to face them. Not with capes and superpowers, but with gumption. With trembling hands and stubborn hearts.

Here’s the hard truth:
No one is coming to save you.

No stranger will intuit your pain. No hero will appear in your moment of crisis. Even the most well-meaning people won’t know unless you open your mouth and ask. And even then, their help may come tangled in ego and in their own need to be the saviour.

Ask yourself, do you want to be saved by someone seeking glory? Or do you want to save yourself?

Look at Paul Atreidis, the Jesus of the Dune. He was a strange, pale kid high on spice, prophecy and self-importance. He chose a holy war that led to  billions of deaths because he believed he was “the one.” Who gave him that right? One would argue that it was the people that saw the Lisan al Gaib and  didn’t question his words when he screamed, “Kill them all…”

The truth is, we are not messiahs. We are not waiting for messiahs. We are islands, floating, sometimes colliding, most times drifting alone.

But. You don’t need a saviour. You have the power to fight. To speak. To ask. To begin. You are not powerless. You are the person you’ve been waiting for. No one is coming to save you. You have to be, and you can be your own hero.