The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [81]
Resilience is a globally admired quality. The character-building and fortitude gained from missteps can lead to endurance, patience, passion, growth, knowledge, and a host of other key qualities. Bestselling business author Jim Collins called this feature “the hardiness factor,” in praise of people who have used a negative experience “as a defining event that made them stronger.”
Television and film actor Freddie Prinze Jr., a onetime teen idol, is an example of this type of resilience. He was too young to know his famous comedian father, who, under the influence of drugs, killed himself when Prinze was a baby. But he had to cope with the resulting feeling of abandonment, combined with constant reminders of the void in his life; reporters grilled him about his dad even as he stepped onto his school bus. He dealt with these issues by creating a fantasy world in which to escape.
An avid comic book collector, Prinze found comfort in Stan Lee’s characters because, he said, “somehow they embraced who they were and they became great heroes. They made me feel that everything could be okay.” He especially related to the X-Men, outcasts who used their superpowers for good even as society rejected them only because they were different. “I would always pretend that I was this new member of the X-Men, this kid, this young boy, who really didn’t fit in with society because he couldn’t control his power,” Prinze has said. “I named him Prism because he would absorb emotion from other people. Like, if they were mean to him . . . it would be released in all these different directions, and he wouldn’t be able to focus his energy.”
He spent afternoons on his high school athletic fields pretending to be Prism, battling villains like Magneto, “running and diving and trying to dodge magnetic blasts.” Students called him freak and weirdo and isolated him. Bullies threw rocks at him. “Kids thought that was really strange. And it is, okay? I know that I’m weird and I’m the first to admit it. But that’s what I loved to do,” Prinze said. “Instead of getting pissed off, I tried to hone my skills, so eventually one day people would understand what I was doing.”
Now they understand the actor, who had a recurring role on the final season of 24. As the Los Angeles Times observed, “The quirks that made him a misfit at school bring him fame and fortune in Hollywood.” In school, people thought Prinze was odd because he was quiet and sensitive, and they made fun of him for creating plays for girls in his class. As an actor, Prinze exhibits what one journalist called a “vulnerable humanity.” Director Darren Stein dubbed him “a male Julia Roberts, the kind of actor that projects the inner self and makes a character glow.” She’s All That costar Rachel Leigh Cook said, “He’s just an incredibly natural actor, and by far the nicest guy in the business. That’s said about a lot of people, but it’s actually true about Freddie.”
“Back then I was considered weird and a freak, and now I’m considered artistic and an actor, and I do the exact same thing that I was doing back then. . . . People think I’m cool now for the reasons they thought I was strange when I was a kid. I am absolutely committed to my imagination,” Prinze has said. “I look at it like this: I sit back and watch. My whole life, I’ve always been on the outside looking in, I’ve never fit in, and I love it like that.”
AUTHENTICITY, SELF-AWARENESS
Former United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld once said, “The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. And only those who listen can speak.” Self-awareness is an authenticity of being. It is a commitment to the values and philosophies that you have already figured out are important to your individual