There are a lot of people in the world whom I admire, in whole or in parts, but I don't have heroes. It seems such an unfair thing, to call someone a hero, to put someone on a pedestal and lionize them to the virtual point of dehumanization; such a terrible way to recognize the rarity of a person whose work and principles and decency are so abundant and meaningful that I aspire to follow their lead.
Instead of heroes, I have people, flawed people, who I respect, whose humanity I acknowledge as a fundamental part of what it is that makes them admirable in the first place.
After all, they live in the same shitty world that we all do, and have the same human foibles, but manage to be kind and wise despite the cultural cacophony of disincentives to be either.
To call someone a hero, it seems to me, steals them of the hard work they do to be good and replaces it with a distancing exceptionalism, which is really just a way of excusing ourselves from achieving the same goodness. So I don't have heroes.
Quoting because it's such a lovely articulation of something it took me a long time to figure out for myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment