DadHD Brain

“You know, I guess one person really can make a difference… ’Nuff said!”
– Stan Lee

I’ve been thinking about Tom Holland’s Spider-Man tonight, and I think I know why.

It’s not really the suit. Not the action. Not even the Marvel universe as a whole.

It’s Peter Parker wanting so badly to do something big.

He wants to be an Avenger. He wants to prove he belongs in a bigger room, on a bigger stage, doing bigger things. And if I’m honest, that hits something in me.

Because I want that too.

I want my life to matter. I want what I’m doing to feel important. And I’m realizing how often I’ve tied my self-worth to what I can bring to whatever table or room I’m standing in. What I contribute. What I offer. What I can do well enough to justify taking up space.

That probably sounds heavier than a Spider-Man post is supposed to be.

But it’s true.

There’s a line from MJ in Spider-Man: Homecoming where she says if you expect disappointment, then you can never really be disappointed.

It’s a clever line, but it also feels a little too familiar.

Not because I walk around expecting the worst all the time, but because I think I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to outrun disappointment by being useful. By bringing something to the room. By proving I have value before anyone gets a chance to question whether I do.

Maybe that’s part of why this version of Spider-Man sticks with me. Tom’s Spider-Man feels easy to root for because he carries that underdog energy so well. He’s not just chasing something bigger. He’s chasing the feeling that he belongs there.

And if I’m honest, I know that feeling better than I’d like to admit.

Maybe that’s also why the ending of No Way Home hit me as hard as it did.

Peter saves everyone, and in the end, everyone he loves is taken out of his life one way or another. Aunt May is gone. MJ looks right at him and has no idea who he is. Ned is still there too, but not in the way he used to be. Peter is still himself, still carrying all of it, but suddenly he is alone with a life nobody else remembers.

I hated that ending for him.

And maybe part of the reason I hated it is because it brushed up against something in me I do not like admitting out loud.

Sometimes it feels like I have to keep proving I matter, or I start to wonder how easily I could be forgotten.

That’s not a great feeling.

It also makes me ask a harder question: why does that fear come so naturally sometimes?

Maybe that’s part of why I want so badly to do meaningful things. Maybe part of me is still trying to outrun the fear of being forgettable. Maybe some of my striving is not just ambition. Maybe some of it is self-protection.

And maybe that’s why the whole “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man” thing hits differently now too.

Because the older I get, and especially now as a dad, the more I think Iron Man had a point when he kept pulling Peter back toward the smaller assignment right in front of him.

Maybe the real test of a life is not whether it looks big from far away.

Maybe it’s whether you can stay present in the smaller, quieter places that do not look impressive at all.

Being a dad has a way of confronting every part of me that wants worth to come from performance. My kids are not asking me to be impressive. They are not evaluating my resume. They are not wondering what I bring to the room in some polished, adult sense.

They just need me there.

Present. Patient. Honest. Able to apologize. Able to laugh. Able to stay. Able to come back after a hard day and try again.

That kind of importance is easy to overlook because it does not always feel big.

But I think it might be.

If I’m being really honest, part of me still wants the bigger room. I still want to feel significant. I still want to do something meaningful enough that I can point to it and say, see, that mattered. See, I mattered.

But being a dad keeps pulling my attention back to the ordinary moments. The kind nobody writes origin stories about. The kind that still carry the most weight.

The stage got smaller.

The stakes did not.

So much of what matters most at home looks ordinary. Bedtimes. Talks in the car. Small moments of patience. Owning it when I get something wrong. Trying to create a home that feels safe, even while I’m still working through the things in me that have never fully felt settled.

None of that looks like becoming an Avenger.

But maybe that’s the point.

Maybe one person really can make a difference.

Not always in the loud, visible, larger-than-life ways we imagine. Sometimes in the quiet ways. The local ways. The ways nobody claps for. The ways that happen inside a home, inside a conversation, inside the tone you set, inside whether your kids feel safe coming to you.

Maybe love always comes with responsibility. Not the flashy kind. The daily kind. The kind that asks you to keep showing up.

I still want my life to matter. I do not think that desire is wrong.

I’m just starting to wonder if I’ve been looking for proof of it in the wrong places.

Maybe what I’ve been looking for in bigger rooms has been right in front of me the whole time.