The Yellow Impurity

  Every boy at some point had a favorite super hero. Some would wear a towel as cape and pretend to be Superman. Some decided that Batman was cooler and created their own utility belts and fought pretend mobsters. I loved Green Lantern, yep, the guy with the power ring. For those less "comically inclined" a Green Lantern is a sort of intergalactic cop that carries only one weapon, a ring that uses the force of his or her will to create anything that the Green Lantern can think of. Pretty cool right? As a young boy who spent most of his time alone, creating stories and writing them in my journal, a hero who could create something out of nothing appealed to me. 

  I read and reread the adventures of Green Lantern a.k.a. Hal Jordan for years and as I grew older, I started to see a change in my favorite character. He grew more tentative; he started to really question his decisions all the time and oddly enough, he started to grow more and more gray hair. It was weird for me, I hadn't anticipated my favorite hero growing old but here Hal was doing just that. Finally he faced the ultimate tragedy. His city; Coast City was destroyed by an enemy named Mongul. Hal fought him....and lost. He lost because Mongul's skin was yellow and for all his ring's power, it could not harm anything that was yellow. The Lanterns called this "the yellow impurity". By now you're probably like "what does this have to do with writing?"

  The reason Hal's ring couldn't impact anything yellow, was because yellow represents fear. A lantern has to use his will to overcome fear in order to be successful. That was a very important lesson that was lost on me as a young boy. I wrote so many short stories as a youth that I never shared. I succumbed to fear every time.As an adult, it occurs to me that in order to become a good writer or a good ANYTHING for that matter, you must overcome the myriad fears that you may have. Stop telling yourself that you can't do it or that someone else is better than you. Instead, just hone your craft and be open to criticism that can make you better. After his defeat, Green Lantern completely succumbed to fear. He hurt those closest to him and became a shell of his former self. We can learn a lot from his fall from grace. Until next time.....

C.T.H.

Resident Smockick book collector