During his opening monologue at the 2019 MTV Movie & TV Awards, host Zachary Levi hoisted up a photo of him as a nerdy, 14-year-old version of himself for the entire show and viewing audience to see - a move only for the brave. He proclaimed how he was the spazziest drama nerd ever back then, and that he still is, along with everyone in the room, and the crowd laughed. He then followed by saying, "If you are like 14-year-old me sitting at home watching this, thinking that maybe you'll love yourself one day if you could finally be somewhere like here, stop doing that, and start loving yourself right there, right now."
This was a much more sobering message, but it is something we all should hear and listen to today.
Too often, we stuff down that inner nerd, because it's not cool to be nerdy. It's not normal to geek out over our little passions or to be too uniquely ourselves. All of the "popular" or successful people seemingly are regular. Common. Picture-perfect. They stuff down aspects of themselves in order to fit a mold because that is what society claims gets you somewhere in life. It is what we are all conditioned into thinking.
However, the fact of the matter is that, when it boils down to it, we all have something we are nerdy about. We all have that one thing that brings joy into our lives and makes us freak out like a kid in a candy store, whether we are a big executive in some New York corporate building, or an actor hosting a TV show, or an every-day person sitting on the couch. We're all the same in that way, and hiding or stifling that inner nerdy and passionate kid does not determine, oddly enough, the success we will face. It merely shapes the amount of happiness and comfort we will face when the inner nerdy kid inevitably reveals itself.
If you do not believe Zachary Levi about this concept, believe Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
He pushed forward the same message as Levi when he got his Generation award. He said, "The most powerful thing that we can be is ourselves." He also told a story about how people told him he has to stop being himself in many different ways in order to make it to Hollywood (including to stop calling himself "The Rock," a move I figure that lad or lady regrets). Ultimately, when hiding himself, as they said stopped him from enjoying life, he decided "I am not going to conform to Hollywood - Hollywood is going to conform to me."
Basically, there is little happiness in changing yourself to fit the successful mold others tell you to fit. If you are not first accepting of what makes you and what nerdy tendencies you have, then any success you may have later on by conforming to fit that mold will be empty. Love your nerdy, passionate self, be true to yourself, and you will find real happiness within yourself for however you turn out. There is no better way to do it.
So, as Zachary Levi closed the show saying, "Love yourself, love yourself, love yourself, love yourself. You are worthy of that love, you are worthy of that love."
Even your inner nerd.
