Four Life Lessons I’ve Learned from Stan Lee

As I write this, the venerable Stan Lee is 91 years old, alive and kicking. In case, you’ve lived in a fall-out shelter since the Eisenhower administration, Stan Lee is an American comic book writer, editor, publisher, media producer, television host, actor, voice actor and former president and chairman of Marvel Comics.

When I was young, like everyone else my age, I spent my money buying comic books and Marvel Comics were part of my monthly buys. You see, his heroes were flawed and very human and appealed to the very young me with my own insecurities. Lee’s characters were blind (Daredevil) or bullied (Peter Parker) or paralyzed (Professor Xavier), yet they still managed to change their world.

Each month, the Generalissimo (as Lee called himself) would give me and my peers monthly advice in his Soapbox column calling us “True Believers” and signed off with “Nuff said” and “Excelsior!”  Stan Lee’s comics and columns were life lessons for me and full of teachable moments such as:

thor31. Family will hurt you first and often in the most painful way possible. – This thought is most apparent in the dysfunctional relationship between adopted brothers Thor and Loki. If the only thing you know about these two characters comes from the movies, you’ve missed half the relationship. In the comics, Loki would often tell Father Odin that Thor did something wrong and needed to be punished. And Odin, for whatever reason, would often punish Thor purely based on Loki’s word. I realized that if Thor’s brother could tattle on him and get him into trouble, I shouldn’t be surprised if my brother were to tattle on me to my mom.  As a  result, I’ve learned to share selectively even to family the things that I’ve done or am going to do in my life.

The Thing

2. Yet family is everything. – The Fantastic Four are more than just a superhero team up. They are family. However, they are not the family I’m referring to. It is the search for family that drives one of the team member, Ben Grimm (The Thing), that is the life lesson here. Ben Grimm, born into poverty, lost his parents at an early age and was raised by his Uncle Jake and Aunt Petunia. He was an overachiever, looking for acceptance; hence, he joined a street gang, the high school football team, the Marine Corps (or the Air Force depending on which comic you read) and was the only one of the Fantastic Four whose appearance was horribly deformed by the space accident that formed the super team. In a moment of self-pity, he referred to himself as The Thing, a name that stuck. And in those moments, Grimm finds his surrogate family in his team mates and in his blind girlfriend, Alicia Masters. From this, I learned that it doesn’t matter how powerful you become, if you can’t share your success with people who understand you and accept you as you really are (warts and all), you’re not successful at all.

3. With great power comes great responsibility. – While this quote is attributed to Peter (Spiderman) Parker’s Uncle Ben, it is actually a quote from Voltaire. Nevertheless, this quote (along with the death of his uncle) was the course correction, young Peter Parker needed to change his life. It also changed my view of the world. Great power is not just great strength, but rather the power to influence and it’s a power we all have within us. We don’t have to run a company or be the President of the United States or have superpowers. We simply have to believe that we have the ability to influence and promote change and the obligation to do so. Whether it is teaching, preaching, managing or parenting, we have an obligation to do the best we can, so that those we’re leading will profit from our example and make our society better. That what Uncle Ben meant when he said it to his nephew and that’s the life lesson I took away from it.

 

4. People fear what they don’t understand. – This life lesson was brought to us by the X-Men. This group of mutant teenaged superheroes led and taught by Professor Xavier was entirely about accepting who you are and not worrying about whether others accept you. The X-Men realized that they were different from other “normal” human beings, but they felt an obligation to use their mutant abilities, not for personal gain (as the villain Magneto wanted), but for society gains. They did this knowing that they were feared by the very people they sought to protect. But they continued to do what they thought was right, because it was the right thing to do whether or not they got recognition for doing it. This what Professor Xavier taught his students and by extension the readers.

Stan Lee’s characters often failed in their personal lives, but never stop trying to win at life. And from those characters, the 12-year-old me learned that: You have an obligation as a human being to be the instrument of change you want in the world. You should believe in others, but believe in yourself first. You should do what you think is right even when others tell you you are wrong or you know you won’t be publicly recognized or lauded for doing it. You should hold your family close and don’t be afraid to expand your family beyond the one you were born into.  Finally, you should love unconditionally, but share guardedly. 

Mr. Lee was a huge influence on my world because he told the young me via his comics that I am okay and I can change the world. Today, my world is a better place because Stan Lee’s characters were in it. ‘Nuff said. Excelsior!

One comment

  1. So true! Loved hearing these points and I too am a Stan Lee/Marvel comics fan. Blessings!

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