Reboot

 

As a child I often imagined myself a superhero. I would eventually put away this fantasy, but as the years passed the idea of a solid origin story and a mysterious super power continued to weigh heavy on my mind. This did not pan out, however. Besides having the very dull ability to eat food past its “due date,” I am, unfortunately, very normal.

My own lack of a mutant healing factor, however, never stopped me from reading about the exploits of more gifted heroes such as Captain America and Spider Man. Hundreds of hours (and dollars) were spent collecting comic books during my adolescence. In fact, had the Marvel Cinematic Universe dropped into the culture two decades earlier, it’s unlikely I would have even found the time to get married.

This sounds stupid, perhaps, but the reality is I put in a lot of hours throughout the 1990s honing the skills needed to make me a keepable husband. Had my attention instead been focused on those dazzling big-screen adventures, my own life story would have likely followed a much lonelier route. Fortunately, by the time Disney+ came out a few years ago, saturated as it is with more MCU and Lucasfilm content than even I can reasonably digest, I was already married with children, and thus all I needed to do was grab the remote and start the cycle all over again.

One particular series that the whole family looked forward to last summer was “Loki.” Now, this show is so complicated and full of comic lore and allusions to the larger MCU that it would take days to truly unpack its relevance. For the sake of this column, then, let’s just say this series is about the importance of becoming yourself.

In the series, Loki, who is technically a bad guy, disrupts “the Sacred Timeline” by being, well, bad. This causes problems and produces what is known as a variant of himself to exist outside the “official” flow of cosmic history. The show then spends the next five episodes exploring that concept as Loki meets and often battles his own variants hiding out in multiple timelines.

Admittedly, it’s a lot.

It’s interesting, though, too, because it begs the question, “Might there be variants of myself, for example, years down the road, existing - or not - based on actions and decisions I make today?”

            That heavy concept then forces us to ask other questions: “If I keep doing what I’m doing, will I simply become an older variant of my current self? Or, even worse, if I double down on some bad habits, might I someday devolve into an ‘alligator man,’ grumpy and unhealthy and ready to snap?"

            Once we have some miles on us, it’s easy to see how past events do influence our present reality, and this reflection is not always pleasant. Regrets are part of life, however, and anyone who claims to have none is either a liar or dangerously unobservant. Fortunately, our understanding of time flows both ways, and thus we can ask a third question, “If I step up now, develop some good habits and behave like this particular Loki, of all pretend people, might I become a version of myself unexpected - the redeemed hero?”

Spring is a good time for origin stories. Easter is a good time to think about sacrificial heroes and retconning ourselves into something nobler. Early in his ministry, for example, Jesus called Simon “Peter” not because Peter was behaving solid at the time but because Jesus knew his potential. Jesus understood what Simon would eventually become - the rock. Although impulsive and a bit unreliable throughout much of the Gospels, Peter became one of the founding fathers of the early church, the bedrock apostle, just as Jesus had proclaimed years before.

It might seem a strange segue to move from a discussion of a Marvel supervillain to a Biblical hero, but both stories emphasize an important truth - if you’re alive, your story isn’t over. God has work for you.

Today is perfectly suited for a reboot, regardless of your timeline.