SHAZAM!

If you will all allow me a few moments to geek out, let me tell you all a little about one of my favourite superheroes:  Shazam (aka Captain Marvel - apologies if my flip-flopping with the names gets confusing).  I promise, I do have an actual point here, so bear with me.  Shazam is perhaps a little more obscure than other DC characters, but what he lacks in recognition, he makes up for in awesomeness.
In real life, Shazam is a kid named Billy Batson.  For you fellow comics geeks, I like Freddy Freeman too, but Billy Batson will always be Shazam to me.  Anyway, here's the story in a nutshell:  Billy Batson comes across a wizard one day.  This wizard is getting old and he knows that the world needs a champion to fight against evil and suchlike, so he passes his power on to Billy.  Whenever he says the magic word 'SHAZAM!' he transforms into Captain Marvel, and becomes an amazingly awesome superhero who can go toe-to-toe with Superman himself any day of the week.  (Supes is cool and all, but he doesn't deal well with magic)
This boyish optimism and good humour is one of the big reasons I like Shazam so much.  Because he's really just a kid in reality, Shazam doesn't carry around this repressed sense of guilt/anger/sadness that many other adult heroes do.  Even in the worst of situations, he believes that things will always work out, and he almost never stops smiling.  Also, he's possibly the only superhero with a family.  Sure, Batman and Superman sort of have families, but the Marvel Family just has a sense of togetherness that you don't find other places in comics.  This all serves to support this sense of optimism and happiness that I mentioned earlier.

Now, here's what all this has to do with me.  A while back in Toronto, one of my friends, a guy who I think never really has relationship trouble, explained to me what to do when things go wrong.  He said it was all a matter of reinventing yourself.  Wallowing in sorrow does you no good in the end.  I guess I've known that all along, but I've never really been all that great in that department.
I didn't think of it immediately, but after a while I realized that Shazam was the perfect metaphor for this idea of personal reinvention.  Billy Batson is basically a non-descript 90 pound weakling kid, but when he says the magic words and becomes Captain Marvel, he has the power to do almost anything.
To sum up, I've been thinking about this whole reinvention thing a lot lately.  I need to find my own magic words, in a sense.  I'm not sure how or when this transformation will happen, but I'm working on it.  Maybe once I figure it out, I can improve my situation like I've wanted to all along.