I Miss Old-Fashioned Values

April 28, 2015 by Marcy Kennedy • Life at Warp 10, Marcy's Blog • Tags: Avengers, Captain America, Marcy Kennedy, old-fashioned values, Tony Stark • 6 Comments

By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

Avengers: Age of Ultron comes to theaters this Friday, and because of that, I thought I’d take a look at some of the lessons hidden in the first movie. A couple of the posts I’m going to share in this Tuesday series are flashbacks (I posted them when the original Avengers movie released), but I’m going to be adding a few new ones as well. Hopefully, I’ll find as many gems in the second movie as I did in the first. So here we go…

Do We Need to Be a Little More Old-Fashioned?

If you woke up one day to find that 70 years had passed, would you be excited or would you mourn for lost friends and family and the way of life you’d known?

When we meet Steve Rogers again in The Avengers, he’s still struggling with this very thing. Back in 1942, a special serum turned him into Captain America, and in the middle of fighting a rogue group of Nazis known as Hydra, he accidentally ended up in suspended animation. He wakes up in the “present day.” The world has changed a lot since 1942.

Not surprisingly, Steve feels like he and his values are obsolete. He doesn’t understand Tony Stark’s cavalier attitude or circumvention of the rules, or Bruce Banner’s scientific mumbo jumbo, or any of the pop references the others make (except for one about flying monkeys—and he’s almost pathetically excited about finally “getting one”).

It doesn’t look like there’s much that can break up the gloom surrounding what should be a golden boy character. But on their way to the flying ship, Agent Coulson tells Steve that they’ve updated his Captain America costume.

“Aren’t the stars and stripes a little old fashioned?” Steve asks.

Agent Coulson looks him straight in the eyes. “With all that’s going on in the world, people might want a little old fashioned.”

Throughout the movie, Steve comes to realize that Coulson was right. People are starting to not only want a little old-fashioned, we’re starting to need it.

And it’s not about the evils of technology. Technology isn’t evil. It’s not about needing to reconnect with nature and unplug. It’s not about retro becoming the latest fashion trend or collecting records or bottle caps.

It’s about reviving some old-fashioned values. I suspect that, like me, a lot of people long for the return of some of the things we’ve lost.

I’m only 30, but when I was a child, stores in my town were closed on Sundays. Was it an inconvenience if you wanted to buy something? Yes. But didn’t we always manage to survive until Monday? And wasn’t that a small price to pay to give everyone a day of rest, a day focused on friends and family?

I miss the idea of a day of rest. And a 40-hour work week that gave you enough income to live off of. Not only live off of, but raise a family on.

I miss when a handshake meant something, people did what they promised, and you could leave your doors unlocked.

I miss teamwork. Days when it wasn’t about getting ahead as an individual by stepping on others, but rather about working together to make sure everyone achieved their goals. We didn’t feel the need to shout to be heard. We didn’t feel the need to sing our own praises because we knew that if we did a good job, someone else would sing them for us.

Those are the type of things that made the good old days good. Those are the things that are now old-fashioned, and those are the things I think we need to fight to get back.

I’m an optimist, but even I know that I can’t turn back time. I can’t change society to make stores close on Sundays again, and we can’t safely leave our doors unlocked even in small towns anymore.

Captain America couldn’t force Tony Stark or any of the others to accept his values either, but he chose to act on what he believed, and by the end of the movie, however subtly, it was his example they followed, even Stark. The man who “didn’t play well with others” worked as part of a team, and even risked sacrificing himself to save the world.

While I can’t change the world, I can change me. Like Captain America, I can still live by those old-fashioned values.

I can refuse to work seven days a week because my body and my relationships need that day of rest. My handshake and my word can still mean something. And I can support others and let my actions speak for themselves. I have control over me.

And maybe, just maybe, if enough of us change ourselves, the world will one day follow.

What old-fashioned value do you think needs to be revived? How are you helping to bring it back?

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Do You Trust Too Easily?

May 6, 2014 by Marcy Kennedy • Life at Warp 10, Marcy's Blog • Tags: Captain America, Marcy Kennedy, SHIELD, superheroes, trust • 8 Comments

By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

Are you someone who trusts people from the start until they give you a reason not to? Or are you someone who feels trust should be earned?

This is one of those ongoing discussions between my husband and me, and it was brought up again by our date night to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It’s a movie almost entirely about trust.

As the movie opens, Captain America is sent on a mission to rescue S.H.I.E.L.D. hostages from a hijacked ship. Nastasha Romanoff (Black Widow) is part of the team that goes with him. But what he doesn’t know is her mission is different from his. She’s been sent to recover the S.H.I.E.L.D. information stored on the ship’s computers, not to save the hostages.

Their divided purpose endangers the entire mission and almost gets them killed.

Captain America storms into the office of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s director, Nick Fury. He wants to know how he’s supposed to achieve his missions if he can’t trust the people he’s working with.

Fury points to his missing eye and says, “Trust got me this.”

Two very different men with very different views on trust. Captain America sees trust as a necessary ingredient for success because, as a soldier, he had to trust the men he was fighting beside. Fury sees trust as something that can get you killed.

The question of who they can trust and who they can’t weaves through the entire story as they discover that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been massively infiltrated by the enemy. People they thought they could trust turn on them and people who they were at first unsure about turn out to be allies. Both men have to give a little in their stance, learning to trust less and trust more.

As my husband and I came out of the movie, I realized that there are very few people in my life that I trust 100%. My husband has more people he trusts, but he’s also been burned more often when people betrayed him.

Trust is one of those funny things—we always think our way of approaching it is best. I’d love to hear from both sides though.

Do you have a lot of people you trust? Are you someone who trusts easily or are you slow to trust? And do you think that’s the best way, or do both sides need to come a little more toward the middle?

If you like suspense, I hope you’ll take a look at my ebook Frozen. Twisted sleepwalking. A frozen goldfish in a plastic bag. And a woman afraid she’s losing her grip on reality.

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What Does Your Behavior Say About Who You Are?

January 28, 2013 by Marcy Kennedy • Life at Warp 10, Marcy's Blog • Tags: Avengers, Captain America, fantasy, Marcy Kennedy, Steve Rogers, superhero movies • 29 Comments

By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

Does our behavior at the worst of times say as much about us as our behavior at the best of times?

At the start of Captain America, Steve Rogers is a ninety-pound asthmatic who’s been turned away from serving in the US military five times, despite their need for soldiers to fight the Nazis.

No one can understand what Dr. Erskine is thinking when he invites Steve to be part of the group of men in the running to become the first in a new generation of “super soldiers” enhanced by the serum Dr. Erskine created. Steve can’t even keep up in any of the exercises or drills they’re put through.

With all the great soldiers in the group, Steve doesn’t understand why he’s the one chosen.

“The serum amplifies everything that is inside,” Dr. Erskine explains. “So, good becomes great. Bad becomes worse. This is why you were chosen.”

Erskine chose Steve because he stood up to bullies, he thought outside the box, and he was willing to sacrifice himself for others. The serum would magnify the good qualities inside Steve, as well as making him physically stronger. If Erskine had chosen the soldier who seemed the obvious choice, the bullying tendencies the man usually controlled would have been intensified.

The rough patches, long days, aches, and disappointments in our lives act like that serum. It can bring out the best in us, but it can also bring out the worst.

When I’m impatient after a long day, or when I’m grumpy because my back hurts, or I’m selfish because I’ve been working for 10 hours straight and I just want to be left alone, I like to think that’s not who I really am. I can easily blame the circumstances. They caused my bad behavior, almost as if they were injected into me from the outside. It wasn’t my fault.

But the truth is, those tendencies must have been there, in me, all along. My circumstances, no matter how sad or frustrating, didn’t create anything.

And what scares me is the thought that perhaps it’s only in those times when we’re tired, hungry, frightened, or stressed when our true selves show up. Our defenses are down, and the unpleasant circumstances serve to magnify what’s at our core and has been there all along.

Both good and bad.

If those qualities are always there, though, it means if we’re aware of our bad qualities, we can work against them when the times are happy. We can cultivate their opposites so that maybe, just maybe, the next time we face the serums of life, what comes out will be better than the time before.

When do you think our true selves show themselves best? When things are good or when things are bad?

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Do We Need to Be A Little More Old-Fashioned?

May 14, 2012 by Marcy Kennedy • Life at Warp 10, Marcy's Blog • Tags: Bruce Banner, Captain America, comic book heroes, fantasy books, fantasy movies, Iron Man, Marcy Kennedy, Marvel, old-fashioned values, Steve Rogers, The Avengers, Tony Stark • 59 Comments

If you woke up one day to find that 70 years had passed, would you be excited or would you mourn for lost friends and family and the way of life you’d known?