Dear V;

I want to save the world. I know many people have said that in the past, but I mean it in a literal sense, I want to save the world and everyone in it. I don’t know what exactly I want to save them from or if I’m even capable of doing so, but I know that I have to, I know that somewhere deep inside of me I am the one to save the world. I want to save it from the unhappiness, from famine, from destruction, from everything and anything that could possibly hurt people on this Earth. It’s kind of a strange feeling, this sensation, of wanting to be a super hero, the one that everyone leans on, the one that all want to be.

I guess when we were all kids we wanted to be a hero. I think that stems from some deep seeded desire to be the rock for someone else, to be looked up to, to be depended on. Maybe that’s why kids idolize their parents like heroes because to them there is no stronger person in the world. They are your parents, they make all of the bad go away, they make everything right, they are your rock and, in return, we tie beach towels are skinny necks and pretend that we too can fly. While we must know somewhere in our lives that we cannot jump off of a house and fly with the birds, we still wish we could We want to be strong for someone else, like mom and dad, we want to be someone’s rock.

I’m not so naive to think that I’m a super hero that can save the rest of the world we some sort of unforseen power that I might have. I grew up very little in the time I’ve spent on this earth, but I am not so young as to know that those things never really happen, but peole are still labeled as heroes never the less, like it’s okay to call someone else a hero if they did something as simple as donate a dollar to a charity. While I don’t look down at people who do such a thing I do not think they are heroes, simply people with a lapse of guilt so they took care of it by parting with a stupid dollar instead of feeling it to a vending machine. That is not a hero, that is a person trying to convince themself that they are not the source of the problem that the rest of us are trying to solve.

A hero is selfless. That is one thing I’ve learned over the years, a hero is selfless. A hero is willing to do anything and everything to save the people that they care about, to save complete strangers even. That is why, in the comics, a hero is always alone. They might have a Mary Jane or something of the sort, they might have moments where life seems normal, but deep down the hero must know that the next villain that comes around is going to kidnap the girl or the loved one in order to hurt them. A hero should accept loneliness as a sign that they are doing their job right, they should accept that no matter what they do, the bad is going to be the girl again and again and they should simply let her go. Does a heroes Mary Jane deserve to be put through that every other week? Of course not, so a true hero would not let that happen, they would not allow themself to be come attached to people that could get hurt.

I’m not detached, I know that, I have too many attachments to this world even, but I keep them at arms reach, going to them only when they need me and never letting myself depend on them. If I did, I would become weak, and I do, after all, want to save the world. I don’t really understand why I always, always get the strangest looks for telling people that. So I want to save the world, so what? Isn’t that what every kid wants to do? So now I’m adult and I still want to save it, I want to take away people’s pain, is that such a bad thing to desire. I have no problem giving up my own happiness if it means that everyone else can be happy. Does that make me a hero? Maybe not, but I want to save people from that gut wrenching feeling.

Do I have to stop death itself? Do I have to try and stop the inevitable? I don’t know, I don’t even know if I can continue to say that I want to save the world, maybe I just want to change it. Changing the world might mean that I have saved it in some form. Can one person change the world? Can one person take a moment in time and alter the course for the other six billion people? Can I turn my heart away from those I claim to care about to do this? Am I strong enough? Am I hero?

It doesn’t matter, I’m still going to save the world. You’ll see, you’ll see.