The Hero You Are
The Hero You Are
If I asked you to sit down with me and make up a fairy tale, using your imagination to create a colorful and compelling story, you and I would have so much fun. You would have fun in the act of creating; I would have fun just listening and allowing myself to be entertained.
Your story would have its heroes, villains, and a few monstrous creatures that dwell in dark places, their gnashing teeth eager to devour goodness and innocence. Maybe you would throw in a damsel in distress and a knight in shining armor. It is likely that you would tell of noble causes falling prey to evil intent. Good would be pitted against bad, right would wage a furious war against wrong. Depending on your frame of mind, evil might defeat all that is good and decent in your story, or good would triumph against evil. There would be no consequence either way. It’s just a story.
You might tell your story as a tragedy or a comedy or as an epic romance. You could fill it with quirky, quick-witted personalities, or with characters that are dull and dim and destined to lose. You could make it a cautionary tale, a moral tale, a horror story or senseless tripe. Any way you tell it, we would have fun – you in the telling and I in the listening. And when it was told, when you reached the happily-ever-after ending or the good gracious, everybody perished! ending, I’d ask you to tell me another story. I’d ask you to tell me the story of your life. In the telling of that story we probably wouldn’t have so much fun.
Of course, there would still be heroes and villains. There would be talk of noble causes and not-so-noble intentions. Certainly, there would be demons of some sort lurking in dark places. Evil and injustice would be featured topics, and you might even describe certain episodes where good triumphed over bad. You would tell your story as a tragedy, perhaps, or as a comedy, or as a rambling piece of vain nonsense with recurring themes of unrequited love. You might tell me your childhood was sheer magic and everything went downhill from there. Or you could tell me that you survived a horrible and traumatic childhood and magically recovered.
By believing your story and trapping yourself within it, however, your narrative would bear the burden of something a little too real to be entertaining. As you relate the high points and low points of your personal history, you may laugh, you may cry, you may judge, condemn, lie and deny. Your words may be profound, but offer no wisdom; your laughter may be light-hearted but untouched by the blessings of irony. The events of your life might be fascinating, but not fun in the telling – simply because you believe it. You will most likely lose energy and become weary in the process of telling your life’s story, just as I will by listening to it. You have told this tale and retold it over time until you are pinned to it like a bug on a board. And, sadly, everyone in your audience is stuck there with you.
In childhood, you and I knew how to play. We knew how to regale one another with wonderful stories. We acted them out in backyards and back alleys and open meadows. We told them as we sat on curbs in suburban sunlight, sucking on popsicles and dreaming up better endings. We told them in scary ways around nighttime campfires. We told them in clever ways on ghetto streets and in school hallways and on bus rides home at the end of many trying, turbulent adolescent days. We told them under the sheets, giggling and gleeful, when all the house lights were out. We told them with desperate urgency or simply for lack of anything else to do. We told them to each other in our happiest times, in our angriest times. We told them to ourselves in our loneliest times. And, still, they were always just stories. Yours is a story that exists among countless stories that show how humanity dreams itself. We are each of us storytellers living in a world of storytellers, none of whom appears to realize that he is in control of his own private and personal story.
We learned our stories early in life, to be sure, and for the most part we have been loyal to the way they were first told. We believe we are slow or clever or naughty or very nice – whatever we were told in childhood. We believe we can never succeed at certain things, but may be at least competent at others. As adults we learned to retell the same stories about our abilities and our great misfortunes, but never did we question them. After decades of circulating the same information about ourselves, it isn’t surprising that we find it hard to accept the promise of us: that we were meant to be the heroes of our own lives, not just the losers or the villains.
If it’s salvation you want, it is there for the asking. And you are there for the answering. Answer your own prayers? Grant your own wishes? Of course! We are the warriors and the demons we loved to tell about in childhood. We are the ones who anticipate the worst and hope for the best. We weave our own narrative and, with a spark of awareness, each of us can tell an authentic and compelling story based on present moment perception, not memories and old wives’ tales. Our personal reality is an artistic expression, and we can be masterful at it.
Stop. Listen to yourself. Question what you say – and have always said – about life and your role in it. It never was the truth. This particular story came from hearsay and was gradually elevated into superstition. Try composing another point of view. Dare to conquer the lies you have told about yourself in the past. Dare to demonstrate the qualities you admire in the world’s great spiritual messengers. What does a hero mean to you now? What does integrity mean – or courage, or loyalty? They should all apply to you first. Faith – a fantastic personal power – must first be invested in you, so that you may be the ray of light that guides and comforts. It’s not so hard to step up and use your words consciously. It’s not so hard to take right action now, without doubt or deliberation. It’s not so hard to fall in love with yourself, as you did once, long ago. At that time your love was natural and spontaneous, and then you began to doubt.
Once upon a time, you were a hero in training. And then you faltered. You believed the opinions of others, and they became your own, resulting in a story that failed to inspire even you. Not believing yourself is as much a formula for a more gratifying life as it is for telling a fantastic fairy tale. Listen. Listen and unlearn the old stories. Feel the romantic love that you’ve been yearning for all your life. It is in you. It comes from you and was always intended for you. All the monsters that once curiously described you are ready to transform into champions for truth – through acts of conscious storytelling and loving, heroic action.