the hero’s journey
inside job that’s been outsourced
who holds agency?
People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.
~Paulo Coehlo
I’ve been thinking about how good it feels to be a hero…
We read about heroes, watch them on the big screen, and celebrate their actions.
Does the idea of an outside hero blur the lines of personal responsibility?
It’s more effective for an interventionist to provide inspiration for what others might do than have aspirations for what others should do. That way no one gets needlessly disappointed. ~Jerry B. Harvey
I first thought your image was inspired by the pointillist and impressionist painters around the late nineteenth/early twentieth century cusp! Quite pleasing regardless of what I’m reminded of...
I wonder, is there a minimum number of souls in one’s sphere of influence to qualify as a hero? Or a magnitude of effect? (During your role in the classroom, would aid rendered to the kiddos - helping with removing a backpack, tying up a shoelace or ponytail ribbon, comforting a shy child on the first day - qualify as being a hero? And in whose eyes must one qualify?)
Raised in a household with an over abundance of bon mots, one was “The best servant does his work unseen.” (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.) Yet I believe a certain amount of visibility and concurrence among the observers is requisite for one to be labeled “hero.”
The thought crossed my mind that Mother Teresa would never have wanted to be Johnny Carson’s guest on the Tonight Show. Oops! She was. And her reply, to Johnny asking if the Nobel Peace Prize and the money may have gone to her head, was exactly what one might expect.
An unwilling hero perhaps as she likened herself to the little donkey Jesus rode astride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday!
Self promotion then doesn’t always trump a self effacing posture for being regarded as a hero...
Thanks for today’s thought provoking topic, haiku and all!