Posledniy Geroy

I was reading some of my older posts and in the middle of noticing spelling errors, I thought about the past (as I am wont to do, as are you from time to time). Only this time, I didn't dissolve into a love-sick baboon or was rapt with a desire to change the past. This time, I thought about my current and former heroes.

I still remember my former heroes. I'm sure you remember yours as well because it's no surprise that everyone has at one point or another in the earlier segment of their lives looked up to someone, and not necessarily because it was a matter of height. You looked up to someone because you thought there was something special and inspirational about them that made you want to change something of yourself or do something different. This being a result of their behavior or being or skills. There was some quality, perhaps, that you wanted want to emulate. Whatever the reason was, that person was your hero. Sometimes, you even wanted to be them.

Of course, there are basically two types of heroes. Super and otherwise.

The ones who fall under super tend to be called superhero and have their own particular dichotomies and such BUT they tend to be more fictional and extraordinary than the heroes you'd find in real life. Trying to emulate the impossibility presented in fiction is a terrible idea: radioactive spider bites are deadly. But it's the ideas behind and beyond the spider bite that really set the stage for one's development. Ideas like responsibility, selflessness, a sense of humor, and courage, among other things. Yes, these heroes fought crime and placed themselves in damn-near impossible scenarios dangers but they were to be looked up to for being courageous, smart, selfless etc.

Heroes that exist outside the confines of the pages of a book or television screen include people who are also self-less and courageous and who genuinely care about what they do and the people they encounter. Firefighters and cops are heroes. Yes, cops are heroes despite what cynical ideas and attitude you may adopted over the years.

But getting back to the scattered topic at hand: heroes. They exist and will continue to die out in everyone's mind again and again until the end of time. For me, most of my heroes are gone. Or that title, no longer applies as it did before. I used to have several heroes in different fields but as time went on, that status faded away.

The admiration I held become more about what they could do rather than who they were. It's not cynical to say that heroes will let you down, or you'll make them let you down because you will grow up and change your mind. Or because they might reveal themselves to be something other than what you thought they were. It's realistic. But also inaccurate because you let yourself down and you want to pin the blame on someone other than yourself. As such, you pin the blame on something you believe to be infallible but by then you've become jaded and you just see that hero as nothing more than another person.

It sucks when it happens because you've invested a lot of time and effort into admiring or even emulating only to have yourself destroy yourself through destroying your heroes.

But this isn't always the case. Sometimes, you do just outgrow your heroes. They fade away into a corner of your mind that you rarely visit anymore. You become so engrossed in what's in front of you and what is coming up that you forget to take time to appreciate what built you up / what helped you grow up. You forgot to be the person you wanted to be and ultimately just become some sort of drone that was shaped by others rather than your own goals and dreams and such.

How badly your younger self would weep if it knew how far you had fallen.

Most of my heroes have been replaced with people whose skills I admire. I might still have a few heroes but very few of them wear spandex or even fight crime.