What Avengers: Endgame Taught Me About Being My Best Self

It might not be in the way you think

I tend not to try too hard in looking for messages in movies. If a movie has an explicit message, it’ll hit me over the head with it.

Even subtle messaging has its place. If a movie wants me to work a little at gleaning a message, I’m okay with that. Movies have taken the place of fables and parables in modern culture and I’m okay with that as well. If learning something valuable is part of the movie’s mission, I accept that engagement.

Sometimes that engagement takes me by surprise.

Avengers: Endgame had a lot going on. Aside from all of the action and time travel and whatnot, there existed a less-than-subtle layer of philosophical thought in the villain Thanos’s desire to save the universe from itself by eliminating half of all living things.

One could spend hours picking apart Thanos’s flawed reasoning. Fair enough. He’s a flawed character, but at least this motivation was better than the one used in the original comic books.

But that’s not the profound message I’m talking about. No.

There is a scene in which Thor, very much weighed down and haunted by his failures and losses, time-travels to Asgard during the time of Thor: The Dark World — long before the death and destruction that ended Thor: Ragnarok.

In the Thor: The Dark World period, Thor still has his family, his friends, and even a girlfriend. It was probably the last time he was “on top of things” and feeling like the Thor he felt he was expected to be. For the most part, it was a good time to be Thor.

That would begin to change after his mother, Frigga, is killed by dark elves. But at that moment in time when future-broken-Thor returns to Asgard, he returns to a time when he had confidence in himself.

Endgame’s Thor is very different. His confidence has been shaken if not destroyed. He has essentially given up on life and is at his lowest point. It’s played for a sad laugh that the one thing that draws Thor back to the Avengers to take part in their plan to undo Thanos’s “snap” was the enticement of free beer. Upon reflection, I think the beer was just an excuse. Broken-Thor felt like a failure and assumed that others saw him as a failure — so he acted like a failure to the hilt. I think when he’s drawn back to the Avengers, he is seeing a chance to find himself again through the alcohol haze. He just wasn’t sure how to find his real self again.

As a recovering alcoholic of twenty years, I felt for Thor at this time. I didn’t laugh at the beer-bellied drunken sot. I wept for him and was immediately drawn into his story arc of redemption.

In that Avengers: Endgame scene when he returns to Asgard at its height, broken-Thor is confronted by his not-yet-slain mother who immediately sees his pain.

It is at this point in the movie where the real lesson for Thor and the audience is revealed.

Frigga says, “Everyone fails at who they’re supposed to be, Thor. The measure of a person, of a hero, is how well they succeed at being who they are.”

Well, shit…

I could have saved a lot of money on personal development books and lectures if Frigga had just dropped by my house one day and laid that bit of cool on me.

Call it a mid-life crisis at age 53. Call it what you will. I sometimes can’t help comparing my place in the journey through life with other people’s place in their journey through life and wonder if I’m measuring up.

I think we all feel this way from time to time, and I’m getting better at being happy with who and what and where I am. The struggle and the learning continue, of course, but the words of wisdom from a Norse goddess by way of a pair of Hollywood screenwriters knocked me flat. These are words I can summon up now at will to sustain me during periods of self-doubt.

“Everyone fails at who they’re supposed to be, Thor. The measure of a person, of a hero, is how well they succeed at being who they are.”

In the grand scheme of things, I’m doing pretty well. My life is and has been a lot more interesting than most. I’ve done some very cool stuff. I have a family I love. A job I enjoy. A roof over my head and food on the table.

I’m happier when I’m my actual self than the self I think I’m “supposed to be.”

It’s funny the places you find wisdom.

Cheers!

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