Essay on My Limiting Beliefs

I had a friend called Rashid. We were best of friends then one day I woke up and he was gone. I thought that he had gone to run a little errand but within two hours, I would soon realize that he was gone forever. I have been robbed a few times in my life. The few times I have been robbed, it was of possessions but this time around I lost a person. The pain was unbearable and on the first night, I cried myself to sleep. Rashid had died because of a terrorist act. The worst thing of all is that I had to learn of his death through a mobile text and the television. Rashid had indeed gone out for an errand and because I was asleep, he sent me a text message of where he would be. He was at a place that had been bombed by a suicide terrorist. Someone had decided that they had had enough with their life and chose to take away my friend too. I have never been as angry as I was at that time. Then I got the vision of how Rashid had died. Soon after, the visions came even when I was awake and I ignored them but soon I realized my life had changed forever.

Within a month, I realized that I could see things in the future. It was not about any other events but precisely terrorist events before they happened. I realized I would get clear visions like a video playing in my head of people who were making bombs, of places that were about to be bombed, or even of people discussing where they were going to hold people hostage. I can see their faces and activities; I can hear their private conversations and phone calls as well as the people that they are talking to. I realized I needed help when I saw a vision and ignored it and soon an attack was in the news and the reporting was exactly as I had seen. Soon I called protection agencies to warn them about impending attacks but they also ignored me at first till they couldn’t anymore. Now, all protection agencies fighting terrorism are on my side and together we are fighting one terrorist at a time.

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My mission is simple; it is to stop a terrorist act before it happens. I want to stop hostages and bombings before they happen. I have the opportunity to see all of it before it happens and I consider that a blessing. I don’t see myself as a superhuman and so far, people only know me as TTR which stands for the Terrorist Seer but no one knows what I look like or what I do. Even the name TTR was given by protection agencies because they didn’t know my name or face. I have a fairly normal life because, during the day, I am an ordinary accountant. I check the books and balance them. During my breaks, I interact with my workmates but I prefer being alone. I am what people call an introvert. I rarely go out unless I have to meet a friend. I love my job because I love numbers.

I also love my other job even though I am not paid for my services. My payment is the greatest in the world. It is the satisfaction that there are less evil people in the world. I only switch to TTR when I have to. This is when I have tips to give to the FBI or any other organization in the world that needs it. I only become TTR when I have seen a vision. I have the private numbers of all governments in the world. When I see a vision, I call them and give details of where, when, and how a terrorist attack has been scheduled to happen. It is part of my mission to save young recruits and when they are arrested, I become their mentor and talk to them online about ways they can save themselves and others of their age from becoming terrorists. I also make sure that the masterminds get the punishments they deserve and I help governments around the world in the fight against terrorism which is a common war.

I live in the modern world and technology is around us. We have the most sophisticated technology but it has not helped us much with terrorism. People have stated that technology use in terrorism will be an invasion of their privacy and this has tied the hands of governments because it would be infringing its citizens’ rights. I, on the other hand, help solve this problem and people get to keep their privacy as I expose criminals.

Today, I stopped a terrorist attack in South Africa. For the last few days, I have been getting visions of two men working on a bomb. Then in another vision, I could see a man making phone calls about suicide bombers and about a good negotiator who would take a few hostages in a mall and make demands about the release of some of their people who were in government custody awaiting trial. I usually have the whole picture of an attack within 3 days and when I see the actual crime scene, I call the respective government. On a good day, I get 24 hours to get the government ready but sometimes I only have a few hours to stop the event. Today, the actual time I saw was about 7 hours before the event. I warned the South African government that they needed to be ready within a few hours to be able to stop the event. We agreed that no evacuation could be done so that the terrorists would not get suspicious and abort the plan. The government got its best snipers, bomb experts, and undercover agents to watch and mingle with the crowds at the mall. This way, we would be able to arrest the terrorists or kill them if we were out of options. So we staged our ambush and the terrorist arrived just as I had predicted. I had described the terrorists’ faces and artists had drawn the pictures so the agents had them for easy identification. I stayed online with the police the whole time and could hear every calculated move they made.

Soon, the terrorists moved through the mall, and just as one of the terrorists was shouting orders; the police swooped in on them and arrested them. The bomb experts were already on the terrorists’ vehicles detonating the bombs and cutting off the suicide bombers, and explosive vests. The operation happened within a nick of time and the citizens who had witnessed it were a bit shaken but they were safe, not sorry. The climax of every ambush happens when the person in my earpiece whispers, “We got them TTR.” This is always the happiest part of my life and at that moment, I usually think there is no better way to avenge the life of Rashid.

Superpower Analysis

My superpower is visions of future terror attacks. I get short visions of the planning of the attack and the execution plan. I can see the number of terrorists and their roles in the attack. I can listen in on their conversations and telephone calls. I can see the places they plan to attack and at what time the attack is scheduled to happen. I can see what everybody is doing whether it is the making of a bomb or the surveillance of the places they want to attack a few days before the attack.

My biggest limitation is that I cannot see other crimes before they happen; my visions are only limited to terrorist-related violence. I also do not get the whole vision of the attack at the same time, and I have to be keen to connect the planned events. I get short visions of parts of the event at each time and I only know it’s the last part of the vision when I see the site of the planned attack. I have a physical body limitation as I cannot visit places of terror attack and help officers with the task. I am only limited to a phone call and video surveillance when available because my identity has to remain a secret and the terrorists will never know just who sets them up.

I have other limitations as well. I, for example, can’t guide governments on the best ways to capture criminals because I have no prior military experience. That job is for them to figure out with the details that I give them of how the attack will happen and detailed descriptions of the terrorists. Another limitation is that I cannot read a terrorist’s mind and so I only work with what I see and hear. I consider it a limitation that I cannot see the targeted civilians of the terrorist acts and be able to warn them. While I can see and describe the terrorists’ faces, I cannot see the actual victims. I also do not get visions during an actual ambush to help push things a little faster. In the end, all the security officers can depend on is their preparedness as sometimes the visions are late and I can only piece together the events a few hours before the actual attack.

My powers are realistic but only through the help of technology. Cities are increasingly detecting crime before it occurs through real-time data generated by crime-mapping platforms, CCTVs, and gunshot-detection systems (Muggah, 2018). These kinds of technology sift through data because the controllers believe that terrorism is predictable and can be stopped before it happens. The technology focuses on hotspots where such crimes occur and police units are trained to respond immediately to a suspected attack. European Security 2017 proposed the use of technology to discourage spam messages and block terrorist communications before they happen (Tamkin & Groll, 2017). This was said during a United Nations meeting where leaders across the world urged tech-smart people and companies to find ways to counter terrorists spreading hate and communicating online. The leaders were adamant that technology should be put to good use to stop terrorists in their tracks. Although my superpower in vision form might depend on psychic abilities which I am not sure exist, humans can see terrorist attacks before they happen by looking at the evidence and data collected by technology understanding the pattern, and stopping it before it happens.

I chose to give my superhuman self this power because I am tired of terrorists. They are a taint to religion and countries as a whole. People have been wrongly profiled as terrorists just because they look a particular way or come from a particular region. I hate their total disregard for human lives and the destruction they leave behind. They have resulted in huge economic losses and have left people to rebuild things they have lost due to a senseless war. Nobody deserves to lose their life or property to terrorists. Terrorists are a cancer to society and we must find ways to eliminate it. I love helping people and thus the reason I chose this superpower.

Self-Analysis

The character is similar to me by the values we hold. I hate to see people suffering because of terrorism or any other reason. I like to help when I can. The character is also similar to me because we have both experienced the loss of a good friend although in different circumstances. I know the pain I felt and the void my friend left behind and that is what my superhero must have felt when he lost Rashid. We both root for a better world and the end of terrorism and violence in the world. Both my superhero and I believe that terrorism is not religious or racial, because everyone suffers for it. The similarities are important to the character because he helps bring out my beliefs about terrorism and the desire to see the end of terrorism. The primary motivation for this character is to rid the world of terrorists.

The character is different from me by the fact that he is an introvert while I am an extrovert. I thought it was important if the character was an introvert because they would be able to have ample time with visions. The character is different from me with the superpower because I cannot see a terrorist attack before it occurs. He needed to have this superpower to end terrorism. We are also different in that he is a power among governments around the world and has direct access to them. It was important for him to access any government in the world to be able to help fight terrorism in the whole world.

I decided to have the character different from me in some ways to improve his superpower stature and enable him to accomplish his mission.

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References

1. Muggah, R. (2018). How smart tech helps cities fight terrorism and crime. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/cities-crime-data-agile-security-robert-muggah/
2. Tamkin, Groll, Cook, Traub, & Walt. (2017). At U.N., Leaders Tell Tech Industry to Do More to Fight Terrorism. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/amp/s/foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/21/at-u-n-leaders-tell-tech-industry-to-do-more-to-fight-terrorism/amp/