THE IMPORTANCE OF HEROES
When X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the latest of the X-Men movies, was released, my husband, daughter and I were there for opening night. Like so many others, we’re fans of shows about characters with superpowers. Ironman. Spiderman. Watchmen. The Spirit.
For Geoff and I, it’s a love that lingers from childhood. We enjoy the nostalgia of seeing our old friends on the big screen. But for many, the attraction is larger than that. Ours is a world hungry for heroes, desperate for someone-real or fictional-that we can look up to. Someone we can trust to do the right thing, no matter the cost.
I expect that many, if asked about heroes, would say they’re something that ends with childhood. That they’re a need we outgrow. That the world-saving role model whose identity can be hidden by glasses is so impossible it’s laughable. Yet we still like the concept so much that Hollywood is filming the flicks one after another.
Most of us are lucky as kids that we can find easy heroes, but as we mature, we lose track of what it was about those heroes that we admired. The ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound will always be cool, but that in itself isn’t all that heroic. It’s the to-the-core goodness, the willingness to die if need be to protect those we love, that we looked up to and wanted to emulate.
“As you get older, it is harder to have heroes,” wrote Ernest Hemingway. “But it is sort of necessary.”
I’ve always been lucky to have easy access to heroes, ones I didn’t have to buy comic books or go to the theater in order to see. My father’s my hero. He always has been, and always will be.
He and my mother have been the steadfast ones I could count on, regardless of the circumstances. They can calm my fears now as well as when I was 10.
I love it when others talk to me about Dad. His former coworkers can make him sound superhuman, like a character from a classic movie or novel, someone larger-than-life and respected by all. (And feared by a few.)
He’s compassionate, yet tough. Sensible, yet silly. His morals and values are so ironclad that I find it unfathomable to imagine him doing anything that barely even tickles of wrong.
But it’s Dad’s fearlessness that I most admire. He never allowed his lack of experience at something to deter him from attempting to do it. So what if he’d never re-roofed a house? He’d say that even the fastest and most efficient roofer had to start somewhere. He’d puzzle it out and learn as he’d go.
The older I get, the more my dad seems to come out in me. I’ve adopted his fearlessness with what I’ll take on (although I lack his capacity to complete what I start). Like Dad, I can putter around in the yard for hours on end. So long as I’m outdoors, I’m content. And to follow Dad’s lead, I’ve never been motivated by money or position; shiny, pricey things have little appeal; and I’d rather be home than anywhere else.
I think I picked a good hero. I’ll never outgrow him.
I have too much left to learn.
