I'm No Superman

To an extent, I know most of you guys have this little problem. When we see someone in need of help, we HAVE to help them out. It happens especially with friends, people we like, or even people we don't like like that. Sometimes we sacrifice so much in order to help these people, we lose track of ourselves. We might slip up with school stuff, other people, work, or maybe even God? Pretty much, we throw ourselves in harms way for that person. It's very much a jump now, think later mentality. It could be out of justice, a conflict between your moral code and the issue at hand. It could even be out of love whether it's platonic or romantic. Either way, we consistently, and almost without fail, continue to jump in front of trains, and take bullets for these people. If the superhero reference is too nerdy for you, then I suggest looking up Bruno Mars' song, Grenade, on YouTube.

I've always known it as the Superhero Complex, but others might know it as the White Knight Syndrome. Regardless, due to my love for superheroes and comic book characters, I'll stick to my superhero complex.

Having been raised by a bunch of girls in middle and high school because of figure skating and speed skating, I was always thought to think of the girl first. If an older sister started complaining about her guy problems, chances were that little Matthew was sitting around for the girl talk. These talks always ended in the same fashion. "Matt, when you date, or hell even if you're not dating the girl, always think of her first. Treat her like this *insert random situation here*." Thus began the rigorous conditioning of being taught to always hold the door for girls, do nice things for them and more. Call it my hero or knight training if you will.

Things like these seemed harmless at first. Whether you want it to or not, and more often than not, feeling develop. Especially as we grow older, thoughts and desires to enter into relationships, date, and court people get stronger. You would think that with age comes wisdom, but our actions end up becoming more and more misunderstood. As much as it sucks, I guess things get to a point where you need to pull in the reigns and kind of cut people off or out of your life. Now, I'm not saying to ignore them, but if you feel like you're leading them on unintentionally, then maybe you gotta kill the complex a little bit for their sake and your self preservation. For me, I'm starting to realize that I need to focus a lot more. It's like a sister told me this weekend, "You can't save everyone."

Maybe the key is to focus on certain people? Your best friends, your family, maybe the person you're interested in? Instead of spreading yourself thin and wearing yourself out so much, maybe what's needed is to focus on whats right in front of you. It'll cultivate richer relationships in those areas and hopefully growth emotionally, and most importantly spiritually.

I guess it's time to focus, and be a little wiser (yes I mean that in the GCC context). As we enter into the next stages of our lives, I think focus is something that's needed, especially for me. I can't continue to be like a loose cannon trying to do all these things. I'm no Superman.

P.S. I just love this photo and thought I'd share it. And for the record, any girl that would allow this at a wedding is the coolest girl in the world. I wish I could do something like this. Just saying! :P