My Own Hero

I've never really understood the need to have "heroes" or people you look up to in a sort of adolescent way. You may admire someone's talent or quality of some kind, but, on the whole, one is bound to be disappointed in any full-blown admiration.

Take Gandhi, for example. Unquestionably, he was a great man, but sleeping with two or three young girls for "warmth" or whatever excuse he came up with wasn't something you should be particularly proud of. Churchill led his country through "blood, sweat and tears", but called Gandhi a "ridiculous little man in a loincloth." Jefferson was all for the rights of man, but he was a slaveowner and fathered several children with one of them. Arthur Miller lectured his countrymen on moral issues in his plays, while he kept his retarded child a secret all of his life. The list of greatness tainted by shameful deeds is endless.

In the final analysis, it's up to us to discover our own greatness of spirit by looking not at some human icon but within ourselves.

Comments

  1. Roberto Ariel FernándezJanuary 14, 2010 at 11:27 AM

    This seems that it's a reaction to a stupid article published in "El Nuevo Dia", precisely on Sunday, January 10. The article seems to adopt the strange notion that Puerto Rico is on the wrong path because of a lack of adequate "role models." In my humble opinion, whoever subscribes to that notion, even partially, confuses cause with effect; and wrong ideas about causation are very pernicious.

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