Growing up I spent my fair share of time and quarters in arcades. Friends’ birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese and Bullwinkle’s were just an excuse to stand in front of my favorite cabinets, destroying the aliens or saving the princess.
One of my favorite arcade games was X-Men: The Arcade Game. The game was based on the 1989 animated pilot Pryde of the X-Men and featured the X-Men battling Magneto and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The game was a simple beat-‘em-up but my friends and I couldn’t keep ourselves from coming back for more. Thankfully it was released for Xbox a few years ago so now, whenever I want to don Cyclops’s visor or unsheathe Wolverine’s claws, I can do it from the comfort of my own home.
I love the game but have always been thrown off by its playable characters. It is a six-player game and there are six playable characters: Cyclops, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus and Dazzler.
Which one of these is not like the other ones?
Really? Dazzler?
Whenever the cabinet was full and six players were taking on Magneto, someone had to be Dazzler. Dazzler is a mutant who can turn sound vibrations into light and energy beams. She was created in 1980 as the X-Men’s representative disco queen and is still an active member of the team. However, compared to the other X-Men in the game, Dazzler seems a little lacking.
And sometimes I worry that I’m a Dazzler even though I really want to be a Cyclops or a Wolverine.
But is being a Dazzler that bad?
Dazzler has been a member of the X-Men for over 30 years and, in the arcade game, she was able to beat up Sentinels and Pyro just as well as any of the other X-Men. Her power set may not have been as awesome and she may not have been as popular, but Dazzler contributed nonetheless. She didn’t worry about the fact that she wasn’t Nightcrawler or Storm. Dazzler was simply herself and that allowed her to make a difference in the game and on Earth-616.
Too often we miss out on what God wants to do with us because we’re too busy wishing we were someone else. God didn’t create us to be someone else; he created us to be us, you to be you. You may really want to be Storm or Colossus but God made you Dazzler or Nightcrawler. When we try so hard to be someone else, it’s like we’re telling God that he got us wrong and we don’t trust in his workmanship.
God doesn’t make mistakes and we need to trust in that reality.
Even if that means we end up playing as Dazzler.
What helps you be the person God made you to be?
Embrace your inner disco! Good post.