I intended to write about a particular person this morning. Instead came to the keyboard and realized that I needed to take a break from the hero worship a little bit. Writing about Viktor Frankl last night in the midst of finishing cleaning my house in preparation for my mother's visit, well, I guess I got a little reflective.
What makes a hero?
So many things could make a hero for me, some of them could be the same for you, and there could be so many wildly divergent paths between. Growing up, I prided myself on having no heroes. Being as I grew up in the era that was post-Vietnam, knee deep in the cold war, surviving the vacuum of 80's pop plasticine culture, having no heroes was the only viable option. Or so we believed then. Truthfully my heroes were the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Sylvia Plath, The Bolsheviks, Sid Vicious, Exene Cervenka, David Bowie, Andy Warhol, Amelia Earhart and Annie Oakley.
My generation was to be dubbed the Generation X, the 13th generation of Americans. This suited me incredibly well. Though the proliferation of plaid flannel and phat pants that marked our era, well, very glad that passed. We were the generation that saw the scam in the scheme, the revolution had happened before us, so we were in that lull of history. Heroes were few, heroes were rebels.
As I've grown older, I am glad my youth was experienced with a healthy angst and anger, it made me question the value of nearly everything. As a person in her 30's now, I must wholeheartedly apologize to my parents for the acceleration of aging all that angst must have caused them. But thank them with an equally full heart for allowing me to roam, for allowing me grow into my own in all those fits and bursts that are the violent but beautiful truth of growth. Perhaps they're my heroes today, my parents. All four of them.
Thanks to all the questioning, thanks to years spent convinced of the meaninglessness of it all, thanks to the nihilist ilk of so many gen x moments, I eventually found something new to rebel against some time ago: Apathy. That inevitable circumstance that came along with 90's culture I've eschewed in my maturing into adulthood (adulthood-ish). Much as I learned from years obsessed with the paranormal and the existential, our existence is what we make of it, our truth is what we believe it to be.
The wall came down in my lifetime. For me, heroism is abundant these days in that persons are striving to lead fuller lives and in doing so are affecting change in the everyday. And isn't that what a heroic act does? It makes things better than they were before that act or intent. Heroism is not necessarily setting out to be a hero, but to stop bitching and start making things better.
Heroism is being a force for beauty. Heroism is not wanting to lull away into an apathetic cocoon and instead stepping up to that proverbial plate. Heroism is alive and well if we choose to see it that way. Not that John Wayne pull up your boot straps and hate blacks and queers sort of macho way our once weird white patriarchal society would to paint it. Heroism in acts of humanity, heroism in acts of responsibility, heroism in an abundantly respectful pragmatism.
There are going to be a lot of people to live after we die, so maybe we could all try a little heroism in our living so that things don't suck for those people we don't know yet. And you know, have some fun while you're at it because paying the bills can be a drag. But all else in between there are so many opportunities to live heroically. Not to say that we all need to go out and be annoying show boats, but I'd say the most heroic acts are those that are intentionally for the better good, for the better strength, for the better beauty, for the better truth.
I now hand over my soap box so you can use it for something better.
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