I had a conversation the other day with my son and daughter-in-law. We were talking about some recent story…. reimaginings. I confess I’ve not seen the new(er) live-action Mulan, but I had heard numerous reviews about how the basics of the story had been changed.  

The original Mulan was the story of a young girl who takes the place of her aged father when every family must send someone to fight in the army. There she must disguise herself as a man, and learn how to overcome the difficulties she faces. The moral, and benefit, of the story, is to find ways to overcome your weaknesses by playing to your strengths. 
The new live-action Mulan features a bad-ass unbeatable chick who is just awesome. The moral of the story being… you know… Be awesome.  

Maybe they felt like this because they misunderstood the story of Mulan as being particularly about needing to overcome female weakness in a man’s world, which in today’s society doesn’t really fly because… #GirlPower! But the power of the story isn’t about girls finding ways around female weakness, it’s about people being able to find ways around their weaknesses. The story has more universal applicability in finding ways to use personal strengths to overcome difficulties. A recent thing I read about “recognizing quieter strengths and being able to use them.”, made me think of this.   

The problem with a message like “Be Awesome”, is that it usually will lead to failure. Granting confidence is sometimes the necessary missing ingredient, but only if you already have the awesome. Confidence while lacking awesome probably means you’re just gonna get your butt kicked. It reminds me of one of those Japanese game shows I watched years ago, where the contestants had to run up a steep channel while a boulder came down. There were some pockets placed in intervals in the channel walls to duck into, so the point was to quickly get to the pockets, duck in, and avoid the boulder. Well one dude marches up the middle of the channel throwing punches like he is in a video game and just gets creamed. Boulder hits him, and he’s floppin over backwards like a rag doll and getting rolled under it repeatedly. I don’t know what the deal was, I’m going to assume he was just jerking around and knew what would happen, but it seems to illustrate the point that simply believing you can ‘awesome’ your way out of problems is going to wind up with you getting rolled. Better to apply some thought and strategy and play to your strengths, whatever they may be.