The Stark Revelation.
If you’ve never seen Robert Downey, Jr.’s depiction of Tony Stark in the Iron Man/Avengers movies, let me explain him in a few words. Billionaire, Genius, Playboy, Philanthropist.
Well…those are Tony’s words, not mine. If I were going to describe Tony Stark, I’d use some rather different ones. Arrogant, insecure (the real root of arrogance), unhappy and angry.
And yet both sets of words describe him perfectly.
Which to me, as a child and a younger man, was unbelievable. I grew up with this belief that if you were going to be someone, or do something that was out of the ordinary, you had to be a certain type of person.
Good, kind, well-behaved, gentle. That if you were anything less than perfect, then things would go wrong, and you would inevitably be found out.
Which, as you can imagine, tended to stop me from trying a lot of things.
Because when all you can see are your faults and your fears, you don’t think you’re capable of doing the things you want to do, and neither do you deserve them. Instead you spend your time believing that you’ll never amount to anything, and that you deserve even less.
You worry about what everybody thinks of you, and you’re sure that someone, someday, will call you out for being less than you really ought to be.
A terrible thing to carry with you.
Yet for some reason, when I saw Mr. Downey’s depiction of the brilliant yet troubled Tony Stark, I began to realize that yet another thing that I thought was wrong. Here was someone who was obviously a genius, yet who had so many flaws.
A man who could be a hero, yet who could also act in a way that was detrimental to himself and others. Neither good nor bad, neither black nor white. A character whose roots and operating space were very much in the gray.
The kind of man who I believed I could be.
Yet there was a deeper lesson that was awaiting me as I watched. For although the character of Tony Stark is a work of fiction, the person of Robert Downey, Jr. is very much not. If you have known anything of his life, there was a time when he was anything but genius, and was everything that looked like trouble.
A drug addict, incarcerated, and on everybody’s list of people to never hire again. It seemed as though all of his faults were in the foreground, and all of his skills were very much in the past.
But he seemed to have still believed in himself.
And he started to climb back out of his nightmares, and find again the passion of his dreams. Although he was troubled, he was learning to become a better man. Although he still had weaknesses, he had found a role to play to his strengths.
Although there were a million reasons for people not to listen to him, the very power of his example and wisdom meant that people couldn’t look away.
And so despite everything that could have held him back, he rose, and became the man he is today. He was able to make the character of Tony Stark so real because of his flaws, and because of his failings.
We all carry beliefs within us; fears that we’re not good enough, or that we can’t do the things that we think we were born to do.
For me, the revelation of Tony Stark was that you don’t have to be perfect to have value, and sometimes, it’s the very flaws and failures that we carry, that allow us to become the very person that other people need us to be.
So today, I offer you the choice of changing your beliefs about yourself, and invite you to take yourself into the light, and see what is possible for you.
Because no one you admire is perfect, and neither are you.
And that doesn’t matter one bit.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings