lessons learned from 'Hey Arnold!'

So there I was winding down after a long days work and what better to relax me then some good old cartoons from the 90’s. At no point in time did I think, “I might have an epiphany tonight,” but who really anticipates these sort of things, especially when watching something as simple as ‘Hey Arnold.’

Let me preface the beginnings of the episode so that the epiphany will make sense, I will not however diagram the entire show. If you aren’t familiar with the show then shame on you because it’s one of my top 10 favorite cartoons of all time and you’re missing out. Plus I don’t have the patience to get into that much detail.

Anyway, Arnold is sitting next to Lila (his crush) at an assembly, she goes on to tell him about how she has fallen in love with ballet ever since she started taking lessons a few weeks prior. Arnold goes on to compliment Lila on being so ‘sophisticated’. This exchange is all overheard by Helga, a tough as nails girl who has a secret crush on Arnold. Before the end of the assembly Helga’s name is called because she has won a certificate for herself and 3 friends to a fancy French restaurant. She devises a plan to get Arnold and some other kids to come to her fancy dinner, with the mind of proving to Arnold just how sophisticated she can be, maybe even more so than Lila.

I can identify with Helga a lot, I mean, not with the whole unibrow thing, my brows are well kempt. But other aspects of her personality I find to mirror that of my own. She is afraid of showing her vulnerabilities so she constantly plays the roll of tough girl, nothing gets to her and she is afraid of no one. She continuously picks on Arnold, its almost as though she is afraid that if for a second she let her guard down and is nice to him, he will reject her. At least if he is rejecting her because she is teasing him its still on her terms and in her control.

Now onto my epiphany. Helga was going to a lot of trouble to try and be sophisticated because she wanted to impress Arnold, she wanted him to like her. Sitting there on my bed watching Helga watch a video tape on how to be sophisticated, I thought back to all the times I tried to be something I wasn’t, or act more like someone I wasn’t, in order to gain the affections of someone I liked. How often do we ourselves do this? Now I’m not talking about exaggerating attributes or anything like that, I am talking about outright doing something that is totally opposite to ones personality.

Helga is not sophisticated, in fact she is far from it. She is brash, crude, and blunt. She likes sports and isn’t afraid to get dirty. She throws her weight around and can almost be described as a bully. Like I said, she is not sophisticated. But what really struck me as interesting and where this epiphany really derives from, is not that Helga has gone to such great lengths to be someone she is not. Oh no, it is more so the fact that had Lila mentioned something else aside from Ballet, say a newfound love for baseball or soccer, its likely that Arnold would have complimented her on that. The fact of the matter is, Arnold likes Lila. Does he like her because she is nice, sweet, polite and sophisticated? Or does he simply like those things about her because he likes her? It reminds me of that age old question, “do I love you because you’re beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?”

I would say that for the sake of argument, that even if Lila had spoken of her love for something like football, a sport, which Helga would undoubtedly be much better at than Lila, Arnold would still favor Lila. This epiphany at first left me feeling bad for Helga, in that all her efforts to win the heart of Arnold would forever be in vain (because trust me, this would not be her first nor last attempt at wooing him). This also left me feeling sad about some of my own fruitless endeavors and romantic antics of the past. It means there is no control over who likes me and who doesn’t. At the end of the day all we are all left with to do is beg for some mercy from cupids arrow and hope to all hope that the stars are aligned, and if not? Then tough cookies and better luck next time.

Now this epiphany of mine I’m certain wouldn’t fall into the category of a ‘new discovery’, more just like some information that hadn’t really crossed my mind until I witnessed it in the form of a cartoon love triangle. Its also not as bleak as I previously painted it. The silver lining to all of this is that the next time you find yourself asking, “what does he/she have that I don’t have?” The answer is simply this… absolutely nothing. You could go about possessing all the same qualities and attributes as this seemingly enchanted person that has stolen your beloved’s attention and affection, and it wouldn’t amount to a thing. Maybe that’s not the nicest silver lining, but hey, helps me sleep better at night.