The idea is as old as Alchemy – the pursuit of transforming lead into gold. I have been fascinated by transformation since I was a small child – transforming a seed into a plant was the beginning, I think.
Later, I learned that one could understand a problem better by transforming it from one frame of reference to another – sounds in time and amplitude to amplitudes of frequencies. In college, I would not only learn to transform things that way but to the abstract realm of Laplace transforms – a weird polynomial space.
Studying these transformations, what I didn’t realize was that there are other more profound kinds of transformations – even if only literary and metaphorical.
Peter Parker is transformed from an adolescent boy to superhero Spiderman by the bite of a radioactive spider. Imagine that!
A retiring, introverted Dr. R. Bruce Banner is transformed into The Hulk by exposure to intense Gamma Radiation as he tries to save someone else.
Captain Carole Danvers is transformed into Captain Mar-Vell after taking the blast of an exploding light-speed engine.
I think that very few, if any of us, are so transformed. Most of us are transformed as Ant Man or Dr. Strange might have been. Scott Lang, Ant Man, is a fellow who has always been a well-meaning screw-up. His desire has always been to do “Good,” but like of us, he has made many bad decisions. His meeting with Dr. Hank Pym leads to his transformation through the acquisition of technology that affords him new abilities.
Dr. Strange is transformed from a vain, self-involved neurosurgeon to a wise, benevolent practitioner of the mystic arts, by means of an accident, injury, suffering, study and humility. Many of us belong to his cadre, I think.
Many years ago, I recall telling my psychiatry colleague Georgia that I wished for a transformation from myself as a VA physician to a happy person through winning the Texas Lottery. I bought a ticket now and then, but my transformation never arrived. Georgia was not surprised; she was a psychiatrist, after all.
In time, the transformation came; I now call it retirement. It did not come with superpowers unless you consider the ability to face each day with a smile a superpower (and I do). Perhaps it is. I don’t know that Steven Strange would think so, but I think that Scott Lang might.