This week we are going to kick off a series of lessons inspired by superheroes.  We’ll start by thinking about speed, direction, Batman, and The Flash.

Imagine for a moment that Batman challenges The Flash to a race.  The Flash accepts.  The two racers meet at the starting line.  The Flash will do the race on foot and Batman will drive the Batmobile.  Alfred says, “Go!” and the racers take off.  The Flash takes off heading north at the speed of sound, roughly 768 mph.  Meanwhile, Batman jumps into the Batmobile, enters coordinates into the Bat GPS and starts heading south at his top speed of 230 mph.  Batman wins the race.

The Flash is more than 3 times faster than Batman in his Batmobile, so how does Batman win?  For the sake of argument, let’s just say that Batman wins, because he takes the time to figure out where the finish line is before he goes.  This is why Batman headed south when The Flash headed north.  In our story we’ll pretend that The Flash was so excited about racing that he took off before ever knowing where the finish line was.  This probably sounds pretty comical.  This is a silly gag that would show up in a poorly written comic.  You’d probably read this and say, “Come on!  The Flash would never do anything like that.”

Now here’s the gut check.  How often are you sprinting at work without understanding where the finish line is?  This never happens to me, because I’m so awesome.  However, I have a friend who likes superheroes and has two daughters and I hear this has happened to him before.  My friend even told me it has happened to him over the past month.  My friend says, he probably shouldn’t admit his shortcomings, but the last time he checked he’s still human and he still can’t walk on water, so mistakes are part of being human.  My friend wonders if anyone else has made the same mistake.  (<-Comic sans font equals obnoxious sarcasm) 

Bottom line:  It is way too easy to get sucked into the flurry of activity, the need to feel like you’re sprinting and contributing, but the fact is that speed without the proper direction is useless.  Even worse, speed with the wrong direction can be detrimental.

The Challenge: Before you use your Flash speed, will you use your Batman intellect to locate the finish line?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry