When I think about heroes, the chorus of Livingston’s “Fairytale” comes to my mind every now and then:
“Then my mother asked me
Could you find confidence
Beyond Lightning McQueen?
‘Cause stories won’t last once you wake from your dreams
I looked her in the eyes and asked her what it all means
If my heroes only go so far”
We all had heroes we looked up to when we were young, I think. (Maybe some of us still have some.) Heroes made us believe in beautiful things, in miracles, in greatness that surpasses chores and boredom and homework. We dreamed of meeting them, of talking with them, of becoming like them in some small way.
However: Heroes are limited too, are they not?
Part of growing up is realizing that no one in real life comes close to having the characters, personalities, and ideals of a human being that we clung onto as our heroes.
Then we get a little older and learn first-hand just how hard it is to be a decent human being in a world like this. The grand visions of princes who come galloping in to kill dragons and superheroes with fantastic abilities seem even further away.
The more we meet with humanity’s flaws around us and within, the more impossible the existence of any heroes — perfect, powerful, precise, poetic — seems to us. We feel like giving up on seeking such people, or on striving to become heroes ourselves. If so few people try, if barely anyone cares, if being a hero is not feasible, why even think about heroes to begin with?
But then! Then we begin to understand that heroes do exist after all.
They are the people who take pain and transform it into beauty. People who take the crushing weight of straight black lines and add in color, waves, and textures without compromising logic and structure. People who take chaotic cacophonies of sound and turn them into triumphant, throbbing concertos.
They take something broken and turn them into something beautiful.
What does this show us?
Heroes are not necessarily “light beings” or individuals who possess something the rest of us do not possess or have not access to.
They are simply curators of light.