In the 2007 film “Ghost Rider,” Nicolas Cage turns into a flaming skeleton or something. It’s been fourteen years since I’ve watched the movie and I refuse to reread the plot for the sake of this blog post. The movie was terrible but I was young and stupid and didn’t know what a good movie was, so I enjoyed it. I was a big fan of anything Marvel pre-2010s before the movies transformed into quip-dispensers.

Anyway, in this movie, Nicolas Cage turns into a fire skeleton and stops bad guys from doing crimes. Then he grabs a bad guy by the shirt, slams him into the wall, and does this scary thing where he screams, “FEEL THEIR PAIN.” The bad guy experiences a tiny montage in which he is forced to empathize with all of his former victims.

I don’t remember if we saw what happened to the bad guys after that. This was one of the special abilities Ghost Rider had in addition to fire and motorcycles (and like, chains, I think?). I like to think that after that moment of extreme empathy, the bad guys changed their ways.

Now that I know a little bit more about life and movies, I realize that an intense bought of sadness may not be enough for someone to completely reform, but it is a good start.

This prompt probably wanted me to say something like “I wish I could sing” or “I make dynamite cookies,” but I’d gladly sacrifice those abilities if I could instead have the power to make every person self-reflect.

I want to be able to make every person I encounter to suddenly see themselves as other people see them, and think about their thoughts and behaviors and how those have contributed to where they are now.

For some people, the sudden burst of self-awareness may cause their heads to explode like in “Scanners,” but I like to think most people would be better for it. I think our society would be a little kinder and more considerate. It may even lessen the amount of times I would have to hear someone defensively begin a sentence with, “How was I supposed to know…” when referring to something that pretty much any rational human being would know.

I like to think I would also be able to turn this power in on myself. It’s good to perform a self-audit every once in a while to see where you are and where you’re likely to go based on your present. I had to do one recently for a writing assignment, and as irritated as I was to have to take a break from my other work to crank it out, it had a lot of value. It reminded me of some of the things I had wanted to write years ago that I had to put off. It also made me realize that there are more opportunities for my future than I had originally considered.

I think every person deserves to have that, even if it doesn’t feel like “fun” work.

So I want a power that’s somewhere between Ghost Rider and the pre-visit checklist you get at a Doctor’s appointment. If I can’t have that, I guess I’ll settle for walking through walls like Kitty Pryde.