Life Lessons from the Android: Never Stop Growing

There’s an episode of Justice League Unlimited that’s been playing in my head for the past several weeks and I wanted to share a life lesson from it with you all.

Once upon a time, Lex Luthor created a machine that would destroy the Justice League once and for all. It was an android—a nanotech robot capable of learning and evolving as it fought. So he created this thing with all the technological prowess and Davincian ingenuity only Lex could muster and unleashed it on the Justice League.

The Android found the Justice League members and every time he fought them, he adapted to their powers and got stronger. When he fought The Flash, he got faster, when he fought Batman, he got smarter and when he fought Superman…well, it was pretty much over after that.(That’s a life lesson in and of itself. Don’t run from your enemies—learn from them. They’ll make you stronger.)

The Android got so beastly and so thoroughly handed the Justice League’s behinds to them that he eventually stopped because he realized that killing them was a waste of his time. So he blasted off into space and left the galaxy. Like a boss.

Fast-forward several years later and all of a sudden, the Android comes back and he’s bigger and badder than ever. So the Justice League calls up every single hero on the planet to stop him and sets up front line defenses in space, in the sky and on the ground. They figure out that the Android is coming back to kill Lex so they hide Lex in a safehouse so deep underground he’s practically in the Earth’s core. But despite every single demi-god in the galaxy ready to beat this one machine down, he wipes them all out without even stopping to crack his knuckles.

Within minutes he makes it down to Lex, who’s been working on a special cannon that will reprogram the Android’s nanotechnology and completely shut him down. So Lex sees him come crashing in, throws up some deuces and fires the cannon. And the Android takes the hit, eats it like a twinkie and when the dust clears, he drops this line:

“That might have worked a month ago—when I was still nanotech. But I have transcended that limitation.”

And that, my friends is what brings us to today’s life lesson. Don’t ever stop growing. Be the kind of person who, when life throws you curveballs, you can step back and say, “That would’ve killed me a year ago…but I’m not the same person I was back then.”

God has created you with the capacity to never stop growing. But it’s up to you to cultivate that. How are the things you’re about to do today going to make you better? How are the songs you’re listening to, the books you’re reading, the movies you’re watching and the friends you’re hanging out with going to shape you into the hero you were created to be?

What are you doing today to become the best that you can be?

Apples get eaten.

Be an Android.