Yesterday’s post was a “Sunday Funny,” got me to thinking about an interesting question: Who is a hero, really?
When we’re growing up, our idols tend to be much older than ourselves. To some kids, parents might be heroes and even continue to be even after they become parents themselves. An athlete or other performer is often the object of a kid’s adoration. I knew a brother and sister whose avatars were, respectively, a mechanic and beautician. They were like magicians, who seemingly could do the impossible with their hands, in the eyes of those siblings.
I am not an anthropologist, psychologist or sociologist. For whatever it’s worth, here’s my theory about hero-formation: The one admired is visible, whether in person or some medium, and does something the admirer can’t do in the moment but hopes to accomplish one day. That, I believe, is a reason why most kids don’t idolize the author of a book (especially if it’s a children’s book) or creator of a movie or cartoon: They cannot see the wordsmith, the animator, the director or, for that matter, even know their names. Also, they don’t get to see the process of those creations as they do with an athletic performance or dance.
You grow up, become as old as your childhood heroes and your life takes a path different from theirs. Sometimes very different. You realize that you won’t do whatever they did, whether because you couldn’t or your priorities change. Or you realize your heroes weren’t the people you thought they were.
My favorite baseball player was Tom Seaver. He was one of the greatest pitchers ever to grace the game. But he wasn’t a hero: I knew, early on, that I never would be a professional ball player, no matter how hard I worked at it. Later, when I learned about bicycle racing, I admired Eddy Merckx, who was in his prime. But he, too, wasn’t someone I could idolize because in those days, Americans didn’t ride in the peloton. The cyclists I admired were people like John Rakowski, whose around-the-world bicycle tour I followed in Bicycling!, and fellow club members-especially the women—who pedaled up mountains and across hundreds of miles.
In other words, my heroes, even when I was young, were people who did things I couldn’t do at the moment, but could do if I dedicated myself. In addition to the cyclists I mentioned, some teachers and professors became heroes, even though I wasn’t yet considering their career paths, because their education and the kinds of understanding they were out of my range yet still attainable. As for people I never would meet, I looked up to writers because even if I weren’t as great as they were, I could see myself in them: Kurt Vonnegut’s and Allen Ginsberg’s disdain for pretense, Toni Morrison’s understanding of dilemmas and Victor Hugo because he always seemed to ask, “Who are you?” And there was Jacob Bronowski, whom I encountered in his “Ascent of Man” series. He seemed to know everything and somehow made it seem possible.
Although I don’t idolize athletes, there are some I admire as much as human beings as for their sports accomplishments. Among, but not limited to them, are people like “Major” Taylor, Jackie Robinson, Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe and Simone Biles. While I will never match their physical feats, I can still use their courage, integrity and pure-and-simple humanity as guideposts to my life. Perhaps they, the creators I mentioned and people who do whatever they can to make our lives and worlds more livable, are the closest we can find to heroes.
