The final movie before the series finale was Captain Marvel. She is a woman working a regular job and trying to help out a friend and ends up accidentally getting involved in an interplanetary disagreement (basically). In the process, she incredibly gets “blessed” with some supernatural strength, and spends most of the movie trying to understand how she got there, and how to control her abilities.
I heard a joke in another movie that the only way to become a superhero if you weren’t “born with it” is to fall into radioactive material. Luckily, she doesn’t have to go through that. But let’s be honest of us are not going to be imbued with powers from a Tesseract. Most of us are going to remain human during our lifetime. In Marvel movies, humans are always the underdogs and greatly limited. In spite of that fact, the greatest strength each of us have is not extraterrestrial or radioactive.
**Spoiler alert** In the movie, Carol is talking to the Supreme Intelligence near the end of the movie. She has been lied to, and no longer trusts the things she has been told for years. She tries to fight, but realizes she is not strong enough to win the battle. The Supreme Intelligence begins to insult her, insisting that she is only human. And it’s true- she only has so much strength in and of herself.
But even if she were completely limited to being a human, that’s not nothing. She starts to remember scenes from when she was a child and had failed to accomplish something that she set out to do. But even though she keeps falling again and again, she still gets back up. Determined to do better the next time. Determined to press on and improve. Determined to try again.
They imply through this series of memories that the greatest strength that humans have, is simply our ability to get back up. We might not do everything perfectly. We might not have superpowers. We might not have everything we think we need in order to keep going. But we have the ability to stand back up, one more time.
We are all going to come up against times that we fail. Things that overwhelm us. Things that people say we’re incapable of doing. Times that are too hard to overcome. Times we don’t do as well as we think we should have. Times when we disappoint either the others around us, or ourselves. Disappointment shouldn’t surprise us, because none of us will ever be perfect. But more importantly, we have the ability to get back up, stand again, and start over. Recreate and redeem what was lost. Believe for more than we can see.
For whatever it is that you’re pursuing, be it a new business venture, a new relationship, or a career, I pray that you remember that your biggest strength is you can stand again, and next time, you’ll go-
Higher. Further. Faster.
You can do it.