Disclaimer: In case you haven't seen it yet, I’m using a quote from the new Captain America movie.

Here it is:

Tony Stark: [sitting across from Spider-man in his bedroom] Why are you doing this? I’ve gotta know, what’s your M.O.? What gets you out of that twin bed in the morning?

Spider-Man: Because…I’ve been me my whole life, and I’ve had these powers for six months.

Tony Stark: Mmhm.

Spider-man: I read books; I build computers… when you can do the things that I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen… they happen because of you.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw this scene was, wow, what a true hero. This kid led an entirely secret life, fighting crime, and he didn’t do it because anyone told him he should, but because he felt it was his duty.

Now that’s character.

The scene also communicates a surprisingly familiar message that I think just about every single one of these sorts of movies does. In fact, if you’ve seen any superhero movie at all, you’ll recognize it if it's put into different words:

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

That’s essentially what he’s saying. He feels that because he has the ability to do great things, he also has the responsibility to do them for the greater good because others can’t.

It was quite the clever move on Marvel’s part to include and reword the quote, which was first popularized by Spider-Man in the 1962 comic. It's been a virtue of theirs for decades, and isn’t difficult to see that it’s an idea they’ve been pushing ever since their start. But why?

In this example, the concept is fairly obvious – can you think of anyone else who can climb walls, swing from buildings and shoot web from their wrist? Of course Peter Parker should fight Doctor Octopus, Sandman, Electro, Venom, so on.

A super villain calls for a superhero.

But in reality, the concept is a little harder to face. There aren’t any giant lizards running around New York City as far as I know, so there is no need for a mutant teenager in the world. Although it would be pretty cool if there were, we have enough problems on our hands.

Turn on the news.

So how do we reconcile this?

In 1945, the night before Franklin D. Roosevelt died, he wrote a speech about Thomas Jefferson in which he said “Today we have learned in the agony of war that great power involves great responsibility. Today we can no more escape the consequences of German and Japanese aggression than could he avoid the consequences of attacks by the Barbary Corsairs a century and a half before.”

But, again, this doesn’t apply to us individually. He is discussing America as an international power.

Going further back to the very first coinage of the term, which all later documents allude to, a collection of the decrees made by the French National Convention issued in 1793 says this: “The people’s representatives will reach their destination, invested with the highest confidence and unlimited power. They will show great character. They must consider that great responsibility follows inseparably from great power.”

This decree discussed the power of those representatives of the general population as placing enormous responsibility upon their shoulders.

Again, a little distant from us still, but it’s closer.

What do you think? What might this mean for us? If we have the power to do any good, and we don’t, are we responsible for the bad? Are we morally responsible for everything that we don’t do?

That’s a little overwhelming to consider, and a little unfair. As much as many of us may have dreamed, we aren’t superheroes and we simply can’t be expected to be. Thank goodness.

I asked my sister, Nicole, what she thought of the quote, and here’s what she said: “I think it takes a while to figure out what you’re gifted in doing…and in discovering what it is comes the desire to pursue it.

“I think life’s journey is making that very discovery—what makes you different—and I think life’s purpose comes from embracing it and then investing in it for the betterment of others.”

I love that. She brings it right down to earth.

For Spider-Man, his gift is…a spidey sort of gift. For Einstein, it was physics. For Yo-Yo Ma, it’s cello. For me, it’s storytelling. For you, it may be making a killer cup of coffee. Maybe it’s working with numbers, maybe it’s building things out of wood. But I like how my sister discusses our gifts as a power that we’ve been given.

So, if we view it in that light, what are you good at? What can you bring to the world to make it better, and are you giving it the attention that it deserves? You are responsible for the potential that you have and the goodness that it brings to the world.

I’ll wrap it up by quoting a good buddy of mine, Immanuel Kant. He wrote about duty, and said this: “For in the case of what is to be morally good, that it conforms to the moral law is not enough; it must also be done for the sake of the moral law" (emphasis added).

Essentially, do good for goodness sake. You have to power to do good, whatever that looks like for you, so go do it!