I saw all of the articles responding to Superman's 75th birthday and the kind of impact he's had on so many people's lives, and I wanted to be able to share my own personal letter to the Man of Steel. Since I don't have a website, and this is my first time writing something like this, I figured this subreddit would be the best place to put it. So here goes.

75 years ago something emerged out of the darkness that would never be submerged by it again. Something so pure, strong, and true came out of a world that was slowly crumbling bit by bit in 1938. Something that each and every human being on the planet, whether they follow The American Way or not, could aspire to, could relate to, could look up to. Out of the darkness came hopes, dreams, ideals, beliefs, and truth. It put aside all that divides human beings, it put aside everything that made us different from each other, it rose above tragedies and the horrors of every day living. Out of the darkness came an ideal, something that grew larger and larger and stronger and stronger each and every year since it was born out of the darkness. This ideal to be so much greater than we are, to strive towards perfection, to always push ourselves beyond what we ever believed we were capable of, to grow in strength each and every day, to shoot for the stars and never stop shooting. This ideal became personified with a bright blue suit, a flowing red cape, and bright red underwear worn over top of pants. Superman.

I sit and I talk my friends' ears off about superheroes and comic books on a day to day basis, and the majority of them hate me for it. And when you bring up Superman? Forget about it. “He's too strong,” “He's unbeatable,” “He literally has every single power, there's no way he should ever lose,” are thoughts and comments you usually hear come out of peoples' mouths these days when you try to talk about Superman. Many complain that he's unrealistic, that you can't relate to a man who can do everything. Most of these are legitimate complaints, as anyone who has ever had any kind of non-comic exposure to Superman pretty much has seen nothing but the perfect Superman throughout their entire lives. Superman, to many in this day and age, seems to be nothing more than a god. A myth. A legend. Something beyond our comprehension and an ideal that the everyday person can never even come close to attaining.

Think about that for a second. Ask yourself, “What's so crazy about believing in ourselves, believing in our individual power to make a better world, to help others and to strive to be something bigger than we ever imagined?” Before many of us grew old and jaded, we all had these kinds of hopes and dreams. How many of us wanted to grow up to be astronauts? Firefighters? The president? How many of us wanted to grow up to be heroes? People that others dream of being, people that we idolized growing up, that's the kind of person each and every human being dreams of being when they're children. When did we become so jaded with the world? When did we stop believing that we could be great men and women? Was it when we hit high school and realized that it would actually take some hard work to reach these goals? Was it when adults started to tell our young impressionable minds to do something practical? Was it when we graduated college and were thrown into the real world and experienced our first true failure? Why did most of us all of a sudden just give up? When did it become unreasonable to want to be a hero? When did it become “unrealistic”?

In a world where men and women and boys and girls don't believe that they can be more than what the norm is, Superman has never been more relevant. Superman has never been more important, more needed than he is now. In a world where societies fall day by day, where tragedy strikes at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected places, we need Superman. We, as the human species, need Superman. We need the ideal to strive towards. We need to believe that we can be more than we were planned to be. We need to understand that each and every single one of us has the opportunity to come from humble beginnings, even less than ideal beginnings, and rise with great strength and courage to achieve greatness. We all have the ability to be courageous and to serve our fellow man deep down inside of us. Each and every human being has something extraordinary inside of all of them that may never see the light of day if we don't believe in ourselves. Why do all of these ideals and dreams and hopes and beliefs seem so childish to so many people? Why don't we believe that they're attainable? The world needs a Superman to show it what it's capable of. All of us have something special about us, something strong inside of us, that, if we choose, we can use it to aid and inspire our brothers and sisters who all are living human lives.

For all the superpowers, for all of the stories about his alien origin, for all the things that make Superman different, he is completely and entirely human. Superman didn't just show up on the planet Earth and use his strength and power to take hold of the world. No. He grew up a kid like every single one of us. Superman had friends that meant the world to him and would leave an impact on him for the rest of his life. Superman fell in love with his high school sweetheart Lana Lang, and felt the sting of a broken heart as a result of losing that love just like most of us have. Superman had to leave home, leave his life behind and start out on his own somewhere new and terrifying. Superman grew up just like the rest of us. And when Superman grew up, he had a choice: to use his talents and gifts to help the world and to do everything he could to make the world a better place for everyone around him, or to lead the normal life like everyone else, giving into the idea that he could only be what the world told him he could be. The day that Clark Kent decided to become Superman was the day that he showed the world what it was capable of being. We all grow up as Clark Kent, but we all have the choice to become Superman if we want to.

Still not convinced? Take a look at tragedies like 9/11 and, more recently, the Boston Marathon bombings. It's easy to sit and to accept that the world is a dark place, filled with maniacs and killers and that society is crumbling as a whole. It's easy to be cynical and to sit back and say “What's wrong with the world today?” It's easy to not believe in human nature, it's easy to see the darkness inside of some of us and forget what we're all born with. But it's in tragedy that mankind shows its true face. It's in the face of tragedy where human beings show that deep inside of us, we all have the capacity to be Superman. For the handful of terrorists that flew the planes during the 9/11 attacks, the amount of first responders that ran right into the carnage to save people they never met in their entire lives without a second though dwarfed them exponentially. For the two men who planted bombs at the Boston Marathon, there were dozens, if not hundreds, of men and women running right toward the destruction to help anyone they laid eyes on, or running towards the hospitals to give their blood to those who need it. What makes these kinds of men and women any different than a superhero with a power from beyond our world? Inside each and every one of us is the hero that we all strived to be as a child. It never left. We never had to give that power up. We all have the ability to do great things. We can all inspire our brothers and sisters. We can all serve our fellow human beings. We all have the ability to save the lives of others if we choose to. We are all super-men and super-women on the inside. Clark Kent grew up and chose to be Superman. There's nothing stopping us from growing up and choosing to be heroes other than ourselves.

So, after all this, can you see what Superman means to me? What I see when I look at the giant “S” on his chest is the greatest symbol of hope that I've ever come across. When I look at Superman, I see my own reflection. I see my own powers, my own capabilities, the things that I can achieve if I have the drive and if I never give up on the things that I believe in. I see what's possible when you can look fear and tragedy in the eye and say “No, you will not defeat me. You will not bring me down. I will not give in. I'm stronger than this.” I see the kind of person that I want to grow to be. I see that you don't have to grow old and cynical and jaded, that those ideals of a better world, of being a hero, of changing the world aren't so farfetched or childish. Superman shows me that you don't have to give up on believing in a better world, that you don't have to give up on being a better you, that you can achieve and become anything you wish to be if you choose to. We will stumble, we will fall, we will make mistakes, we will face tragedy, but by nature, by everything that is inside of us, human beings will always overcome. The dreams of a child will never leave us. No matter how old we grow, there will always be that something inside of all of us that will never give up on those dreams. Who made the rule saying that we had to give up on those dreams? Who decided that all of a sudden you had to give up on your strive towards being better than anyone ever dreamed once you grew up? I see in Superman what I see in every single one of us. That's why we need Superman. We need a Superman so that we can all see what we're capable of. We need a Superman so that we don't forget that all of us can grow up and make the world better than it was before we got there. We need a Superman to give us something to strive towards, to give us a person to aspire to be, to show us that we are our own light at the end of the tunnel. We can guide ourselves out of the darkness that plagues the world if we so choose. All if you believe in who you are, if you believe in what you're capable of, if you choose to stand up for who you are and decide that you will make this world better because you're in it, then you can become Superman. All you need to do is believe. So what does Superman mean to me? He gives me something to believe in. He gives me something I can dream of being. He makes me want to lead a life that inspires others to lead the same kind of life, to never give up on the person that they always dreamed of being. How can we be Superman? What can we do to become the man who has everything? The answer is simple. Believe in him. Because if you believe in the ideals of our Superman, you believe in the power of yourself. That's the kind of world we deserve to live in.