Dear Diary,
Conventional wisdom says never to meet your heroes. How often do we stop to ponder why? The obvious answer is likely because we would somehow be disappointed. We would learn of mistakes our heroes have made and would see them differently or come to an understanding they are, after all, human. However, what if we never lost sight of people’s humanity? If we didn’t reduce people into idealized versions of something, we wouldn’t be let down later. When I met one of mine, I was neither starstruck nor nervous. He was a person, just like me. I was excited because I enjoyed his work for a long time, but he was never an idea or concept to wrap my identity around.
I am no hero. Often I feel unworthy to be anything but exiled. I’ve had a mentality drilled into me, “All those ‘attaboys’ don’t make up for that one ‘oh shit.'” Perfection is the standard, and you aren’t rewarded for meeting it, only punished for failing. I have excelled at being patient and forgiving of others but have been abysmal towards myself. I see other people’s humanity in stride, can put their lives in context, and as such, it is easy to put it down, let it go. I look at myself and see catastrophic mistakes, impactful events that aren’t so easily forgotten. The pain lies in the gulf between where I wish I were and where I am. I want to be part of the solutions, not the problems.
There are teachers in the world awful to the point students relinquish any ambitions they once held in their education. Students question their capabilities, desires, and futures. Directionless and demotivated, these young hearts stray onto other, sometimes harmful and scarring, paths. The now-former student lost faith in the system because of the teacher. Akin to this, artists with an ego and sense of importance inflated to the point others lose their creativity and faith in the system. Additionally, soldiers and police with abuses of authority so terrible others lose their love of their homeland and faith things can ever improve.
I have encountered all of these individually. I have grown and watched as faith became an understanding of how fragile everything we know and love is and how the few quickly destroy what the many have built over time. I have, too many times, tried to shoulder the burden of the world and fix everything. By setting myself up for failure, I achieved it. My heart was in the right place, but I am only capable of so little in the cosmic context of things. In the end, I don’t want to be one of the growing lists of people that cause others to lose faith in an already broken world.
It is ok not to be a hero. A hero is, after all, a concept. The word ‘hero’ means different things to different people. A hero can be an everyday person, someone doing the right thing in a moment of need, or perhaps simply someone reliable and empowering in the background. I, however, forgot my humanity anyway, the very thing I tend to be skillful at not doing when it comes to others. I treat myself as if I am forced to operate differently. I understand many other issues are at play, including abandonment and abuse, but I am still human.