Learning and understanding

Growing up I read quite a lot of comics (I read a lot of anything I could get my hands on, really) and there were a number of superheroes (and super villains) who got their powers through radiation.  When I first did radiation treatment 5 years ago, I joked that I should be able to get a superpower.  Now that I’m doing my fourth round of radiation, I thought I’d share the kinds of superpowers that I would like (in no particular order) in the hopes that I acquire one!  You may have to do some research to understand some of the references, but it’s all part of the fun 😁 One of the easier powers I’d like is to be a human Babel fish so that I can read, write, understand and speak any language.  Not just the current 6,000 languages that are active on Earth, but every language that has ever existed and any language that will ever exist anywhere in the universe.  Just imagine how many stories and ideas can be shared, in their original languages.  Imagine meetin...

I have a dear friend who, no matter what news they receive, is firmly convinced that the sky will fall in and the world is doomed.  Several of our conversations leave me feeling drained from trying to counteract their negativity.  In contrast, I have a friend once who was so optimistic about everything that I provided them with a set of pom-poms and made them official cheerleader.  Their energy, while uplifting, was also tiring because of the need to always be “on.” I mention them because they both play important roles in life.  My mood swings from one to the other and back, although I like to think that I largely exist in a happy equilibrium between these extremes.  There are days when I’m the cheerleader for my friends, and cheering up others, and days when I can’t see anything enjoyable in life.  On some of those days, I want to scream at the cheerleaders, “Back off!  I want to be miserable!”  (I don’t, though.  I may turn off my phone f...