Heroes

We are allowed to have heroes.

As intrinsically social beings with a high capacity for social learning, it is perhaps inescapable. We see the admirable traits, skills or achievements of others and this becomes entangled with an admiration of the person themselves, or who we imagine that person to be. We make of them heroes. Sometimes we endeavour to emulate them, sometimes we wish to bask in their glow, sometimes we seek their protection, as in the ancient Greek meaning of the root word.

We are allowed to have heroes. It’s not stupid or naive. We are allowed to feel betrayed when our heroes stumble, or fall, or prove themselves utterly unheroic. It’s not silly or shallow. We are allowed to grieve the loss even of a person we really had no right to say we knew. We are human. We make connections. We make heroes.

But we must also be prepared to set those heroes aside as readily as we forged them. They were always chimerical.

Grieve your loss. Continue to love the art, if you choose. Discard it, if you prefer. Art is separate to the artist, but it is also deeply entangled and it is disingenuous to argue otherwise. Our relationship to artists and their art is complicated. Humans are complicated. Heroes are not. Perhaps that’s the attraction.

Grieve. Rage. Mourn. As you need. You are not stupid or shallow for seeing something greater than yourself and setting it on a pedastal to admire, to emulate, to love. You are simply human.

Heroes are easily made, useful until they aren’t. But what you admired, loved, sought to emulate? That’s still yours, to use as you need. Remember that ashes turned through soil can be enriching and vital for growth. Pedestals can be smashed and used to form new foundations.

Be human. Be a good human, as much and as often as you can. The final action of a hero as they fall may be to show us, again, how we can be better.