What I Like About Ben Platt’s Tony Awards Quote

Ben Platt, star of the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen, said this, as he accepted the award for the Best Actor in a Musical award at the Tony Awards in June 2017:  “Don’t waste any time trying to be like anybody but yourself, because the things that make you strange are the things that make you powerful.” (quoted in LATimes.com)

Two critical words make this quote compelling, at least to me: Strange and Powerful. Let’s take a closer look at each word.

Strange—this can refer to someone who is what we sometimes refer to as “odd,” but the tendency we have to think of strange as negative is not always true. Strange can, after all, refer to someone who is “unfamiliar,” “unique”, or merely misunderstood, as well. It can even refer to “one of a kind,” which is not bad.

The term strange is a close relative, linguistically, to “stranger”—not a bad thing or a bad person, just something or someone other people have not become acquainted with yet (there’s potential for something good here—wasn’t it Will Rogers who said, “strangers are friends I haven’t met yet?”). Being strange can simply mean being unique in ways that are different from others. It can also mean being out of the norm, or not following the customs of society, or “following the crowd.” Sometimes, it pays not to fit in—after all, many found Albert Einstein to be in any number of ways a rather strange dude.

Powerful—Break down the word and rearrange it, and you have “full of power,” or at least full of potential power. Power does not have to be assumed to mean controlling or dominating, but rather as the ability to do something—to get something done, to accomplish a purpose (and if you are unique and appear to be strange to others you are powerful and capable to do certain things that others may not be).

The mere fact that we are human means that we are all unique and therefore “strange” in relation to each other. That means we are all powerful in our own way as well—this very statement is “powerful” if it motivates us to seek out our unique contribution to the world.

Ben’s quote rings true to me--we don’t have to waste time trying to be like anybody else. In fact, the very act of doing so diminishes our uniqueness and therefore diminishes our power—and diminishes us.

Because we are strange, we are powerful enough—we just need to become more of who we already are—if our strangeness is the kind that leads us to become better versions of ourselves.