In my short life experience I've found that my most "profound" (or at least the ideas I come up with that leave me the most contemplative) realizations about life come from rather ordinary places. My point in case comes from a book I was recently required to read, called "The Reformation: how a monk and a mallet changed the world." The book was discussing the fact that we see Martin Luther in a very one dimensional way and proceeded to show Martin Luther as a full person with both his flaws and his humorous perspective on various things. The book went so far as to tell a story of how Luther had told his congregation that when he often felt like he was under attack from the devil but he would scare the devil away with a fart (Nicoles, pg. 35). I enjoyed finding out that this famous person had this secret or rather under appreciated comedic side even if it was surprisingly juvenile in nature and then I proceeded with my life.
Now it is important, in order for you to fully understand the argument I'm going to setup, to know a little bit about myself. First off I'm a new college student. My heart longed for a chance to have what I called the "College Experience" and frankly I'm extremely glad that I have had the chance I've been given. This lifestyle (while definitely not reflective of what "real life" is/will be like) is certainly an enjoyable one and it has renewed a great love for learning that I was lacking in the last couple years of my education. Coming into this time period of my life I was leaving a time in which I had successfully completed last section of adolescent development. Disillusionment. I had recently discovered through painfully clear examples that nobody is flawless, and I was forced to break down the pedestals I had put important role models in my life on. This left me in a rather ambiguous place where I no longer knew who to learn from, after all if everyone was just as messed up, confused and lost in this world as I am than why would I take advice of others if their track record is worse than mine. Needless to say this was a less than ideal way to live, no one (in my humble opinion) as young as I, can get by unscathed in life without a great deal of guidance from those wiser than them...but all my role models were gone...so where was I to look?
Fast forward to today and you find me, a budding young college student bursting with curiosity at my very wise professor's opinion on my simple ideas and questions on our topic for the day. As I engaged my professor he gave his opinion in a very professor-esk way, making sure to use both an analogy and making me answer some seemingly unrelated questions before bringing me around to the point he was trying to make and leaving me once again impressed at the way his same size, shape, texture and presumably smelling brain was working on such a higher level than mine. But, as I walked away I thought about my about how my professor seemed slightly more human the more I talked with him. I found myself troubled with the thought that it most likely won't be long until the mysteries my professor continues to reveal to me will lose their magical properties and will become mundane, expected, and sometimes even predictable. I was a little put off by this idea. I then realized that I had elevated most of my favorite professors on pedestals like I had done back home and that at some point I would again be forced to take them off if I wanted to have a realistic view on life.
Now before I had left I had realized that everyone disappoints and had eventually come to terms with this idea, simply accepting that I cannot put people in positions where I view them as if they can do no wrong when no matter who it is we all disappoint. I had learned that this is not something we need to get caught up on because, as a Christian, we always have Christ and can always count on him (for those of you who aren't Christian's you can just tag along till the next part where I'll give a little bit of a solution for everyone...just hold your horses) as someone who won't ever fail us. But even Christ doesn't operate as our selfish desires want him to, aka we get sick, bad things happen to us, and we don't have everything we have always wanted. However, Christ works as an ideal of someone to look up to, put on a pedestal and attempt to live your life for. This is beside the point though, what I really discuss brings us back to Martin Luther.
Now back to Martin Luther, all this thinking about how I was eventually going to have to take my professor off his pedestal made me wish I could keep people as heroes forever without having to eventually awake from the mist. It was this thought that made me realize (sorry reformation book you are really good and interesting but I'm going to have to attack you as an example for a moment) I don't really want to see Martin Luther more deep than one dimensional. In our modern society we have become morbidly obsessed with knowing everything about everyone, no one is allowed to have secrets. Every celebrity whether minor or major must be exposed in all ways and many now exist on the ability to stay relevant and newsworthy for fear that they will be cast away for next years model. This has pervaded every aspect of our life to the point where not even poor old dead Martin Luther can rest in his grave without people peeping in to see if he died with any dirty rotten secrets. I want to live a life in which my heroes can be just that, heroes. No more secrets and mentions of every hypocritical action the individuals ever made, I just want to be allowed to see them as heroes for one reason or another and not have that ruined for me. I know they are humans and I know that they were far from perfect, none of are even to close to it but still I want to be able to find someone to look up to, a role model to encourage me and demand that I strive for better because they did. In a post-hero era even our super heroes have to be flawed, we live in an age where apparently Superman snaps peoples necks out of anger, in contrast to an era where Superman was just a perfect ideal we could live up to. I wish to live outside of this culture and cultivate a life that looks up to our heroes and drags myself forward because they did before me climbing to heights they never reached in an attempt to be like the image I have of them.
Now don't get me wrong I have had the same thought you might be having right now while writing this article. Am I just spewing out the old mantra, "Ignorance is bliss" and demanding to be catered to, to be allowed to live in this fantasy world with heroes. As stated before I am more than well aware of the fact that humans are far from living perfect ideal lives. If there was a are you perfect test, we would flunk, of this I have no doubt. Rather, what I want is to be able to live in a world with heroes I can look up to, role models with whom I don't have to second guess every action, and historical figures that I can let live up to the grandiose mythology we've built around them. Why? So that as individuals we can look and say "Wow, now that is the type of guy I want to be like when I grow up, when I die I want to live a life equal to his." Because the alternative is living in total disillusionment to the ideas of heroes and instead finding ourselves in a world rampant with clear villains with no heroes to turn too.
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