I am a hero-worshiper, unapologetic and unabashed. I want my universe filled with heroes, triumphs and successes. I want a stylized universe where every movement, every breath, every word is selected consciously, with intention, with purpose, with all wastefulness and inefficiency removed; I want the purified, concentrated essence of existence, with all accidents and awkwardness expurgated. And I want to be surrounded by individuals that embody this in concrete form.

I never understood focusing on the mundane, on the ordinary, on the every-day. Every day is filled with the every-day– it is boring by definition. I‘ve often heard the cliche, “Ordinary people are heroes, too”. Nope. False. Heroes are heroes. That’s what makes them different from ordinary people.

We used to play a game when we were young: “If you could have any superpower, what would it be?” The cheater amongst us would normally say, “My superpower would be the superpower to adopt any superpower I wanted”. (This was usually me, trying to outsmart the system.) Super strength, super speed, super intelligence– the ability to have abilities above and beyond, to be larger than life, to bend the rules of the universe to one’s own design.

Watch the average 5-year-old boy on the playground, observe what he aspires to be: Superman, flying at freakish speed and saving the world; Wolverine, healing instantaneously and fighting villains; or a hero of real-world flesh and bone– LeBron James flying through the air, similar to Superman, but in a slightly smaller arena. And the 5-year-old girl is not exempt, pursuing the powers of Wonder Woman, or Storm, or Witchblade or Phoenix. The honesty of youth recognizes the beauty of the superhero.

We are taught, as we age, to give up the attempt, to not bother with trying to become superheroes. We slowly have the “super” beaten out of us, and the “mundane” beaten into us– to fit in, sink into the background, do as others do, follow the trend.

But some fight it. Some don’t bend so easily.

I want to be Neo from The Matrix, I want to be the One, the pre-destined, the chosen. I want to see the code of the universe from omniscient eyes, integrating the raw data, the atoms and particles of existence, into whole entities. I don’t want to see the blandness, the murkiness, the fuzzy borders. I want the pristine black-and-white edges of perfection.

My heroes were not always of the cape-wearing variety. Many of them were musicians I looked up to– Michael Jackson, then Axl Rose. Or, later in life, certain sports figures that pushed the envelope of human ability to a higher level– the Walter Paytons, Michael Jordans, and Bret Favres of the world. Still later, I turned to intellectual heroes, those that challenged a pre-existing way of thinking and were able to perceive the universe from a unique and innovative perspective– the Platos and Aritostles, the Leonardo da Vincis and Michelangelos, the Tomas Edisons and Albert Einsteins and Ayn Rands. Most recently, my heroes have been those that have committed their lives to a singular discipline and literally transformed themselves into warriors-of-flesh-and-bone, creating a suit of armor that the Incredible Hulk himself would envy– the Dorian Yates’s, Ronnie Colemans, and Jay Cutlers of the world.

But one theme has persisted from early youth: Life is about aspiration, it is about the greatest, the biggest, the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, the best. Or at least, it should be. Life should not focus or dwell on the accidental and average. The superhero is the artistic manifestation, the concrete representation made flesh, of certain principles, the concepts and values that lie at the core of what we think matters.

When I first started dating my wife Nikki, I went to watch her and a group of girls play league volleyball. During a break, she introduced me to her pack of friends, and we then left to take a stroll in the beautiful Chicago spring air. When we returned, her girlfriend told Nikki, “The two of you look like a couple of superheroes walking into the sunset hand-in-hand”. And I smiled. I decided then and there to be a superhero. Approximately 15 months later, we had our first child, a beautiful baby girl. Her name? Raven Storm, of course. What better moniker than a name worthy of comic book pages? She’s the newest addition to the superhero household.

I am on the constant lookout for heroes, because I am a hero-worshiper, unapologetic and unabashed. I need that hero to help elevate me to the next level, to pull me up in times of need– to raise my spirits and expectations of what lies around the corner– to make me want to flip the comic-book page of life, and consume the next square panel of flashy colors and bubble letters.