The History of Heroes

Among the myriad of people I came into contact with over the past festival weekend, I overheard something that stood out to me more than any of the other conversations I had or overheard.  There was a man, born and raised locally, who is doing quite well in his life, one would almost say he's doing great things, and when one person complimented him for getting his life together, the other quickly chimed in with a list of his past transgressions.  It was as if to say no matter how much he changed, no matter how much he accomplished, no matter how great he became, he would never escape his history.  For some people you will never be anything more than your mistakes and your sins.  I'm not sure what the naysayer expects from a hero; I suppose they want a champion to be and always have been perfect and faultless, but truly only one such person has ever existed and they crucified him anyway.  The fact is that we all have skeletons in our closets, horrible, horrible skeletons, things we wish we hadn't done but we can't undo.

If you watched anything in the Marvel universe, you may have noticed a pattern emerge in the stories of the most financially successful superhero movies and it is this:  the hero starts out selfish and/or weak and then gains his/her true strength when they learn to care more for the well-being of others than themselves.  When the hero starts out amazing and perfect and then becomes more awesome audiences cringe--This is why Captain "Mary Sue" Marvel, who was so panned by audiences that film makers actually reduced her role in the final movie, not because she was a woman, but because she was annoyingly, tediously excellent at everything all the time.  This is why most people prefer Marvel's faulted warriors to DC's shining knights who are unattainably perfect in all ways.  The one DC exception traditionally being Batman whose life is filled with past trauma and inner conflict and who is also, not surprisingly, the most beloved and the biggest box office success of the DC franchise.  To be clear, I didn't watch Captain Marvel as general audiences hated it but in my own life, I found equal sides for those who liked and didn't like it that I've remained placidly sitting on the fence, paralyzed with indecision about whether or not to spend the precious hours of my half-way-over-life watching it.

So, if we love it in stories so much, why is it so difficult to accept in real life?  Why can't we accept that some people, shocking as it may sound, are not the same person today that they were 5, 10, or 20 years ago?  In a word, fear.  Fear of this sort grows many branches but it all has the same root.  We fear that if we trust this person, if we believe them we may be deceived and hurt and rather than feel that pain, we refuse to allow them to change.  One branch off this root is jealousy.  On the surface it seems like we want what they have, but at the root of this jealousy is fear.  We fear that if this change is genuine, it means that all the excuses we've made about why we aren't better ourselves aren't really true.  If that person can change from sinner to hero, so could we.  Rather than accept that our excuses are lies, we instead say that the other person's change is the lie, that it's merely a façade.

In the end it all comes down to our fears, which are intended to keep us safe.  They are intended for the preservation of the self, and if overly indulged always become a prison. When I think of people in my life who have made huge mistakes and then learned from them and gone on to become better people, I can't help but think of what a sad and empty life I would have if I were resigned to never give them a second chance to be better and earn my trust.  While I agree that someone with a checkered past should be approached with caution, why not allow them to prove through their actions and words that they have indeed changed rather than writing them off entirely as once bad, always bad?  Why not see someone else's success as inspiration to reach higher instead of making excuses for why we haven't tried very hard?

Some people never change, but for better or worse, most people grow, evolve, and often for the better.  What is a hero after all if not a regular person with faults and weakness who learns to let go of fear and stop prioritizing Self.  A hero is just someone who chooses to deny themselves in a moment of importance or every single day, have a little faith, and sacrifice themselves for others.  If the very worst person can turn into the very best, then that means that there is a hero waiting in all of us.      

Shopping Info: J Crew Sweater and shoes from ThredUp, Cord Shorts from Forever 21