There are certain things from childhood that never fully leave you.

They go quiet for a while.

Life gets louder. And somewhere in the noise of all of it, the things that once made you feel infinite get folded away somewhere safe.

But they don't disappear.

They wait.

Something Started Stirring

A few weeks ago, a trailer found me.

A few seconds of footage on my phone. A sword raised against a stormy sky. Characters I hadn't thought about in years suddenly alive on a screen.

A cartoon I used to love. A toy I couldn't do without.

The Masters of the Universe.

A flicker of the boy who used to run…, not walk, run…, home from school because there was something on television that made the world feel heroic and possible and full of wonder.

I watched the trailer. Smiled. And went back to my week.

But it stayed with me. Quietly. The way certain things do.

Thursday Evening

I had just finished a long week and had settled in at home and thought…

The movie is out this weekend…, I wonder if there is an early showing.

And before I could think my way around it, I was walking upstairs.

My kids were home. A couple in their mid-twenties. A couple in their mid-teens.

I stood in the doorway.

Hey. There's an early showing tonight of Masters of the Universe. It's about this cartoon I used to love when I was a kid. You want to come?

I was uncertain they would say yes.

With kids that age, you learn quickly that the invitation matters as much as the answer. That the willingness to say this thing is important to me, and I want to share it with you is its own kind of vulnerability.

They said yes. All of them.

And we went.

The Drive There

I won't pretend the drive to the theater was anything but joy.

I started telling them things. About He-Man and Teela and Man-At-Arms and Orko, that lovable bumbling magician who could never quite get the spell right. About Castle Grayskull, ancient and enormous and full of secrets. About Skeletor, terrifying in the way only cartoon villains can be to a child who has decided, completely, to believe.

About Christmas mornings.

I grew up in a home where money was careful. Every dollar meant something. Every gift deliberate. But somehow, every Christmas, there was He-Man. A new figure. A new vehicle. A new piece of Eternia waiting under the tree.

I don't know what it cost them, but I know what it meant to me.

It meant that someone saw what lit me up and decided that light was worth protecting.

In the Dark

We sat in that theater together, my kids and I, and watched for just over two hours.

The movie was imperfect.

But it was joyful. Deeply, unapologetically joyful. The characters I had carried in my memory for forty years were alive on that screen…, recognizable, faithful, present. Sitting there in the dark, I felt something I can only describe as reunion.

With a version of myself I hadn't visited in a long time.

The boy who believed in heroes. Who believed that good was worth fighting for. Who believed that inside every ordinary person, was a prince who appears to the world as nothing special, yet there was something extraordinary waiting to be called forward.

Did You Like It?

And then the movie ended.

And I turned to my kids.

In my experience, this is where it happens. The polite smile. The gracious nod. The “that was fun, Dad”…, that means something slightly different than it sounds.

Instead, one of them said: “I actually thought that was really good.”

And then another. And another.

I drove home in a kind of quiet that felt full rather than empty.

I invited my children into my childhood and they came willingly. And for those hours…, in the car on the way there, the two hours in the dark, the drive home…, we were all a little bit kids together.

The Lesson at the End

But there's something else I keep coming back to.

The show I grew up watching did something that almost no children's entertainment does today.

At the end of every single episode, one of the heroes would step forward and speak directly to the child watching.

He-Man. Teela. Man-At-Arms. Orko. They would look into the camera and deliver the lesson of the episode. Simply. Honestly. A wholesome, heroic truth offered to a child as if that child deserved the real thing.

Honesty matters. Courage isn't the absence of fear. The strength to ask for help is its own kind of strength.

Every episode. Every time.

I grew up on those lessons without fully knowing I was growing up on them. They became part of how I understood the world. Part of what I believed a person was supposed to be.

The 2026 movie carried that spirit forward. The idea that the story matters, yes…, but what the story is trying to say matters more.

A child watching He-Man wasn't just being entertained.

They were being shaped.

What We Give Our Children

I think often about what's shaping our children now.

What it does to a child's interior world to be told, repeatedly, by characters they love and admire:

You can be brave. You can be honest. You can do hard things. You are powerful.

We have to find ways to bring more of that back. In the stories we tell. In the moments we're willing to be vulnerable enough to say…, this is what shaped me. Let me show you.

Thursday night was one of those moments for me.

By the Power of Grayskull

Which brings me to Prince Adam.

He-Man was Adam. The same person. The same soul. The power was never somewhere else. It was always inside him, waiting for the moment he chose to claim it.

By the Power of Grayskull.

He raised the sword. He spoke the words. And the transformation happened…, not because something was added to him, but because something already in him was finally, fully, revealed.

How many of us are walking around as Prince Adam.

Capable of far more than we're currently claiming. Carrying something powerful we haven't yet lifted up and named. Waiting for the right moment, the right circumstance, the right permission from someone else to become what we already are.

You Have the Power

Find your He-Man... or your She-Ra.

Find the thing from your childhood that made you feel infinite. Go back to it…, to remember who you were before you forgot.

Invite someone into it. A child. A friend. Someone who has never seen your Eternia. Let them in. Let it be awkward and joyful and yours.

The power you've been waiting for permission to use?

You've had it the whole time.

By the power of everything that made you who you are —

You have the power.

P.S. If you haven't seen Masters of the Universe yet…, go. Take someone you love. Just go be a kid for two hours. You've earned it.

P.P.S. If this one stirred something in you — that feeling of carrying more than you're currently claiming…, that's exactly what Almost Chosen No More was written for. And if you're navigating what comes next without a clear map, Navigate What's Coming was built for that season.

With Absolute Sincerity,

Ed Clementi,
Founder & CEO of Inspired Fire, LLC

Make an Impact and Feel an Impact!