Every now and then you get asked the age-old cliché ice breaker of ‘If you could pick one superpower would it be?’ Most people turn to a typical few answers – being invisible, being able to read people’s thoughts, and so on. Even I usually say to fly (typically accompanied by the joke that I’ll save a fortune on travelling, especially around London because it’s never been a cheap endeavour.) However, do you know what one power is underrated? Being able to duplicate/clone yourself. I mean yes, it’s a bit of a scary prospect but for me, that’s outweighed by its various and obvious benefits.

One thing that can be stressful about trying to organise your social calendar is when things conflict – two parties at the same time, someone having a dinner whilst you’re on holiday. Most of the time you equally want to go to both and can imagine you’ll enjoy whichever one you choose which makes it more painful that you can’t be at both places at once. To avoid stress and keep some integrity, my general rule at the moment on such occasions is that I’ll try and honour the first commitment I make. It makes things easier practically but emotionally it can sometimes still be hard to reject something else.

On the other hand, if you could duplicate yourself, imagine the possibilities. Double the experiences and knowledge at all times! One of me could be working full time and my clone could be exploring the world, ticking country after country off my bucket list. Time is such a rare commodity these days, perhaps you could slowly claw some of it back as you strategically use your clones(s) to attend events on your behalf.

I’ll end by bringing this post down to Earth because, of course, I know no one can duplicate themselves (if you can, please comment below and make yourself know😁.) And to some extent, there are benefits behind this limitation – because our time and where we can be at any one time is limited, it makes how we spend it more meaningful. When you go to a friend’s birthday or housewarming do, for example, it makes it more meaningful to know that you could have been anywhere else but decided to not go to those and instead came to support/spend time with you.

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Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash