November 3: Hungry, A Little Tired, Heroes

As the title for this post suggests, I'm a little tired and more than a little hungry.  Last night, I think I ate my weight in left-over Halloween candy when I got home from choir practice.  I couldn't help it.  When I see a Milky Way in a bag of candy, I just have to eat it.  Of course, the solution to that problem is not looking in the bag of candy, but that would be like Edmund Hillary seeing Everest and saying to Tenzing, "Naah, let's just take a picture."

A couple days ago, I got into a discussion with the students of my mythology class about heroes.  I asked them to name a few modern-day heroes.  Of course, they started shouting things like "Batman!" and "Spiderman!" and "My mom!"  Basically, the discussion was going no where at light speed.  So I walked to the chalkboard and wrote "Mother Teresa."  That got the ball rolling.  Pretty soon we had a good list:  Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks among them.

Then I asked my students to tell me what all of these modern heroes had in common.  That list came fairly quickly, too:  strong beliefs; putting beliefs into action; courage; strength in convictions; fighting injustice.  You get the idea.  (Sorry that second list isn't in parallel structure, but my brain is without caffeine.)

The whole exercise was meant to kick off our discussion of the section on Greek heroes from the textbook.  You know, Gilgamesh, Perseus, Heracles.  However, our discussion also got me thinking about heroes and how, in today's world, there a very few people I would consider living heroes.  People to emulate or admire.  (Unless you count Claire Danes, but that may be just old-fashioned lust on my part.)  Literally, all of the "modern" heroes we listed on the board were dead.

The world doesn't have a whole lot of heroes anymore.  There are people I would describe as heroic in their struggles with illness (Steve Jobs, Patrick Swayze).  There are people I would describe as having performed heroic deeds (Chesley Sullenberger, who landed that airplane safely in the Hudson River, comes to mind).  But real heroes, who put their lives on the line for the good of the world.  Very few.  Firefighters.  Police officers.  Soldiers fighting for a just cause.  All are anonymous, heroes without faces.

Instead we have a world where children look up to people like Justin Bieber and Adele and Kim Kardashian.  People who have talent, or people who have a talent for creating publicity.  They aren't the kind of heroes I want my children to have.

I'm not being a crank here.  I'm really looking for people to hold in high esteem.  People I can tell my kids to imitate.  There used to be heroes like that in the world.

Saint Marty needs someone to look up to.

I need a hero, as Bonnie Tyler sings