Want to hear this post instead of reading it? Just hit the play button below, and I’ll happily read it out loud for you.
When I was a toddler, my parents said I had already developed a deep and abiding love for TV theme songs and commercial jingles. Other toddlers were learning animal sounds. I was learning how to perform thirty-second advertisements with emotional conviction.
One day, my dad was sick on the couch — properly miserable, stretched out with that defeated look parents get when they truly need a minute. And tiny me decided this was my cue to leap into both ministry and musical theater. I toddled over, put both of my little hands on his forehead (presumably “praying” for him), closed my eyes, and with the full sincerity of a preschool televangelist, sang the one thing I apparently knew by heart:
“Rattle rattle, thunder clatter, BOOM BOOM BOOM!
Don’t worry… call the Car-X man!”
Not a hymn.
Not a lullaby.
Not a comforting word from Scripture my parents had taught me.
No — I blessed this man with a regional Midwest car repair jingle that probably aired between the weather and an episode of Sesame Street.
The whole room absolutely lost it. My poor dad, trying to recover while his toddler performed the Car-X jingle as a healing ritual.
Looking back, it’s clear: I was captivated by television. I didn’t just watch cartoons. I absorbed them — the theme songs, the moral lessons, the jingles during commercial breaks, all of it baked into my developing brain like a pop culture marinade.
And here’s the funny part: decades later, those Saturday morning worlds still show up when I’m trying to make sense of adulthood. Sometimes it’s comfort. Sometimes clarity. Sometimes it’s just my brain going, “You know what this stressful work email reminds me of? The Care Bears.”
And somewhere in the middle of these nostalgia pop-ups, I realized something: These shows actually taught us things. Real things. Things I still need. So I’m turning that realization into a whole series — a nostalgic walk back through the TV lineup that raised us.
Welcome to “Saturday Morning Life Lessons,” a multi-part exploration of what our favorite 80s shows still teach us about adulthood, work, friendship, courage, and the messy, beautiful business of being human.
And of course, we’re kicking it off with G.I. Joe — because if anyone deserves the first word in a series about grown-up life lessons, it’s the show that told us knowing was half the battle.
Saturday mornings used to be the best part of the week. No school. No responsibilities. Just you, a bowl of sugar disguised as cereal, and a glowing TV screen filled with characters who somehow made chaos look manageable.
The bad guys were obvious. The good guys were loud. And right before the credits rolled, someone from G.I. Joe would pop up to deliver that tidy little moral:
“Now you know — and knowing is half the battle.”
Cue the triumphant music. Lesson learned. On to the next adventure.
It was simple back then. You knew what the battle was. You knew who the villains were. And every problem could be solved in twenty-two minutes, including commercial breaks for Nerf guns and Capri Suns. But then we grew up and we learned that knowing isn’t even close to half the battle.
The older we get, the more we realize that the other half of the battle is what happens after we know. The waiting. The wondering. The showing up anyway. And man, they never made a cartoon for that part.
As a kid, “knowing is half the battle” made me feel invincible — like information was armor. If I studied hard, paid attention, followed the rules, I’d be safe. The adults around me seemed so sure, so capable, like they’d cracked the code of life and were just cruising along on autopilot.
Now I am one of those adults and spoiler: there is no autopilot. Just a lot of manual steering through unpredictable weather.
There are days when I still wish someone in uniform would appear in the corner of my life, point at the camera, and say, “Hey, Rachel — hang in there. You’re doing great. Now you know!” Because the truth is, adulthood is a little less G.I. Joe and a little more G.I. Guess-We’ll-Figure-It-Out.
G.I. Joe meant well. It really did. That earnest PSA at the end of each episode felt like a handshake between childhood and responsibility. If a show with more explosions than plot wanted to tell me how to handle peer pressure, you better believe I listened.
“Now you know — and knowing is half the battle.”
That line made me feel prepared. It felt like the universe was giving me a cheat code.
If I just knew enough, I’d be safe.
If I just understood enough, I’d make the right choice.
If I just paid attention, I wouldn’t mess up.
It was tidy.
Predictable.
Reassuring.
And then adulthood arrived and said, “Hey, sweetheart, welcome to the sequel nobody warned you about.”
Suddenly, knowing wasn’t giving me certainty; it was giving me anxiety.
Knowing you’re waiting on test results.
Knowing you saw the charge hit your bank account, but haven’t seen your paycheck yet.
Knowing your manager wants to “talk tomorrow morning.”
Knowing the world feels heavier than it used to.
Knowing suddenly stopped feeling empowering and started feeling like the prelude to every panic spiral.
Some days, knowing is the exhausting part. The waiting, though — the not-yet-knowing — that’s the part that humbles you. That’s the part where grown-up courage is forged. That’s the part where you discover what the other half of the battle really is.
G.I. Joe had good intentions, but let’s be honest: they never made an episode about the slow, aching uncertainty of being a human who doesn’t have all the answers. They didn’t show Duke trying to figure out his insurance paperwork or Scarlett spiraling because her annual review was rescheduled without explanation. Nobody ever said, “Here’s what to do when you don’t know what comes next.”
Knowing is nice. Helpful, even. But most of adulthood is learning how to keep going when you don’t know — when information is incomplete or uncertain or arriving too slowly for your comfort.
The older I get, the more I realize that courage doesn’t look like how cartoons portrayed it. It’s not running into battle with dramatic background music. It’s not kicking down doors or shouting commands with absolute confidence.
Courage looks like answering the phone when you don’t know if it’s good news or bad. It looks like opening your email even though your stomach folds itself into origami. It looks like choosing hope when fear would be easier. It looks like taking the next right step without a map. It’s smaller than we imagined — quieter, softer — but no less brave.
And this is where G.I. Joe’s lesson still holds up, not in the way they meant it, but in a way that feels wiser now. Knowing something — even a tiny piece of truth — helps us keep moving. It keeps us from walking blind. It gives us just enough footing to take the next step, even while the rest of the path is foggy.
So maybe knowing actually is half the battle…
and the other half is giving ourselves grace while we figure out the rest.
If Saturday morning taught me anything, it’s this: every generation gets its own heroes, and ours came in bright colors with questionable animation quality — but their lessons stuck. G.I. Joe didn’t prepare us for taxes, medical deductibles, or the emotional rollercoaster of being a functioning adult human, but it did give us a starting point.
Know what you can.
Do what you can.
Face the day with the courage you have — even if it’s not much.
And for the rest?
You learn to live with the uncertainty.
You learn to breathe in the in-between.
You learn that the unknown isn’t a personal failure; it’s just a part of being alive.
So as I kick off this Saturday Morning Life Lessons series, here’s what I want you to remember:
You’re not doing adulthood wrong because you don’t have it all figured out. You’re living the untelevised half of the battle — the messy, in-between scenes that never made it to Saturday morning but matter even more. The cereal’s soggy now. The commercials are gone. But the lessons still hold.
Knowing is only half the battle. The rest is courage, kindness, and a little bit of cartoon-era grit. And if all else fails? Raise your fist to the sky and shout “Yo, Joe!” to remind yourself that you’re still in the fight.
Rachel L. Richard is a small-town farm girl turned suburbanite, a delightfully irreverent optimist, Mrs & Mama, floppy dog ear scratcher, lifelong learner, channel surfer, wanderer, believer, occasional creative, out-of-practice musician, cupcake addict, book devourer, and lover of all people.
Leave a Reply