Kids shows are pretty cheesy.
Power Rangers, doubly so.
Heres what the Power Rangers taught me that actually stuck around.
Dont Let Other People Make You Feel Like Crap
Bullying isnt a new trope for kids shows.
In the early episodes, people couldnt even understand the way he talked.
He needed someone else to translate his geek-speak into human words.
The Rangers addressed this often, but it was especially poignant in an episode calledDark Warrior.
In this episode, Billy gets bullied by the disgustingly lovable Bulk and Skull (again).
Finally, hes had it.
He decides to learn martial arts to defend himself.
Instead, he says, I really just needed to prove to myself that I could do it.
In the end, what he felt about himself was more important than what others felt about him.
This was one of the hardest things to learn once I started writing professionally.
Writing for the internet is extremely public.
For a long time, I wanted to write, but I was terrified of putting myself out there.
Worst case, it wouldnt get read at all.
Neither felt like it would be good for my self-esteem.
It would be a lot safer to just do my boring office job and keep my work to myself.
Billy never wouldve done that, though.
Billy wanted to be part of the team, to make himself better and take chances.
For a shy, scrawny nerd, he did rather well for himself.
As the show went on, Billy became a better fighter and a better communicator.
Sitting out the fight wasnt an option.
Off screen, David was bullied for his sexuality by producers and other crew members.
Knowing that he was bullied off screen just as much as on screen hurt the child in me.
At the same time, it made the lesson I learned from him all the more powerful.
Despite the abuse, he stuck around fornearly 200 episodes and a movie.
Being pushed around, insulted, and mocked never convinced him to stop doing his best work.
Which is why it was so shocking when the Green Ranger lost his powers inGreen No More.
In the end, he chose the former.
It shocked kids everywhere.
It was the follow up episodeMissing Green, though, that twisted the knife.
Jason found himself racked with guilt.
His guilt was so strong that it affected his ability to fight.
Guilt has this way of messing with your head and undermining any confidence you have.
It doesnt matter if youve succeeded fifty times before (which the rangers certainly had by this point).
Heres the thing, though:if you give up when you fail, you never succeed again.
In my (brief) college days, I faced failure on a number of occasions.
On one occasion, I lost a tape containing some important scenes wed shot earlier.
While it didnt mean the project was ruined, we did lose some key footage that our team loved.
We all agreed it wouldve blown our teacher away, but without it, we managed a middling grade.
Someone else on the team edited around it and saved us in the end.
By the time the next project came along, I wasnt feeling great.
Our teacher used my failure as an object lesson for staying organized and keeping up with your footage.
I felt like crap, but it motivated me on the next project.
While our finished video wasnt the best, our notes were never cleaner.
Our footage, never more organized.
When I was a kid, being a ranger meant not giving up, even if you fail.
Even years after I stopped watching the show, that never-give-up attitude stuck around.
I thought nothing could be more threatening.
Then Lord Zedd came along, in the three-part seriesThe Mutiny.
Surely, some day, they would be finished and the good guys would win.
This was the first time I was ever emotionally invested in something that went from bad to worse.
In a way, this is a perfect allegory for lifes challenges: they never end.
Every year theres a new one.
This mindset of constant change and new bad guys stuck around even when I entered the job market.
My grandfather did that with the post office.
This strategy would not work for many industries today.
Now, itsill-advised to stay with a single company for too long.
Approaching my career the same way I anticipated new ranger seasons helped put it in perspective.
