Everybody needs a hero, someone they can aspire to be like and admire. I’m not sure if I have somebody I would consider to be my hero, but I definitely have role models that I try to imitate. These people range from successful business innovators to world leaders to my mom, dad, and respected teachers. Having people to look up to is important. It can help you keep growing to become the person you want to be.
Sometimes though I think we can become guilty of hero worship, putting people who do great things on a platform so that they seem to be ‘saviors’. It seems like they are the quintessential embodiment of perfection. They can do no wrong. Our world is reliant upon them in order to make progress and improve society.
However, the unfortunate truth is that all heroes have an Achilles tendon or two. That is to say that everyone has faults and a couple of great people who inhabit the earth for a short amount of time can’t do everything that needs to be done to solve all problems and wipe away all injustices.
I love something Marian Wright Edelman said,
“A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back—but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.”
We can still look up to others, but we’ve got to go beyond that and actually take actions with our own hands and minds. We’ve got to be our own heroes.
