Who is the fictional character you relate to the most?

Who Is the Fictional Character You Relate to the Most?
I get asked this question sometimes at gatherings, usually as an icebreaker, and for years I never had a solid answer. I would mumble something about a random cartoon character from childhood and move on. But the more I have sat with it, the more one name keeps surfacing for me: T’Challa, the Black Panther.
I know, I know — it sounds like the obvious pick for a young African man who loves a good superhero story. But it is not the vibranium suit or the box office numbers that draw me in. It is the weight T’Challa carries, and how familiar that weight feels.
The Crown You Did Not Ask For
T’Challa did not chase power. It arrived at his doorstep the moment his father died, alongside a kingdom that needed steadying and a legacy he had to prove worthy of, all while he was still grieving. I relate to that more than I expected to. When I started King David Properties, I was not stepping into an inheritance in the literal sense, but I understood what it means to carry something bigger than yourself before you feel fully ready for it — to be building a name, a standard, a foundation for people who are trusting you with their money, their homes, their futures, while you are still learning who you are becoming.
There is a particular kind of pressure that comes with representing more than yourself. For T’Challa, it was Wakanda. For me, some days it is my family’s expectations, my faith, the students I mentor through Catch Them Young, or simply the quiet promise I made to myself that whatever I build will be built on honesty in an industry that does not always reward it.
Tradition and Progress, Held Together
What I love most about T’Challa is that he refuses to let Wakanda stay hidden and untouched forever, but he also refuses to abandon what makes it Wakanda. He is constantly negotiating between honoring what came before him and reaching for what the world now needs. I feel that tension in my own life almost daily — as a medical student who also runs a business, as someone rooted in faith but working in a modern, fast-moving industry, as a young man from Benin City trying to build something that respects tradition while still innovating.
I do not always get the balance right. But I have learned, watching that story unfold, that the goal is never to choose one completely over the other. It is to keep asking, honestly, what serves the people you are responsible for.
Grief Does Not Disqualify You From Purpose
Perhaps the part of his story that stays with me most is that T’Challa leads while grieving, and keeps leading through loss after loss. There is a lie many of us believe — that we need to have it all figured out, fully healed and fully composed, before we are allowed to walk in our purpose. His story quietly rejects that. He shows up wounded and still shows up.
I have carried griefs and setbacks of my own while trying to build the Foundation, grow the business, keep up with medical school, and stay faithful to the calling I believe God has placed on my life. There were seasons I felt profoundly unready. But I have come to believe, much like T’Challa’s journey teaches, that purpose does not wait for you to be whole. Sometimes you walk toward it precisely because you are not.
Why This Question Matters
I think the fictional characters we relate to say something honest about what we are wrestling with in real life. For me, it is not the strength or the suit. It is the responsibility, the tension between old and new, and the quiet decision to lead anyway, even while healing.
So I will ask you the same question I once could not answer easily: who is the fictional character you relate to the most, and what does that choice reveal about the story you are living right now?
I would love to know. Drop your answer below.