It seems you can tell a great deal about a person by who their heros are at any given point in time. I would divide the heroes into three seperate camps: 1, are the objective heros. Although I realize in reality this is not such an "objective" determiniation, but for the sake of keeping this succinct, let's just call it that. The objective heros are people like John McCain, a war hero who survived as a POW in Vietnam (or was it Korea?) and refused to be released before his fellow prisoners when his captors offered to do so because they found out he was from a prestigious military family. McCain then returned home, etc., and became a respected U.S. Senator. Maybe another example in this camp would be George Washington, Mother Teresa, etc. This group tends to espouse ideals that you find as just generally admirable and upstanding behavior. People who deserve the respect and love of everyone. I suppose what these people tell you is what someone believes society as a whole should have to offer as its very best.
The scond group what I will call the personality heroes. These are people who have such a close effect on your life that it's difficult to tell why they are even heros. I am calling them personality heros because for one thing you tend to know them personally as opposed to respecting them from afar and their main influence on you is how they shape your life in terms of first hand contact. For me these people tend to be my parents, professors, various people I have viewed as "adults" throughout my development and whose beliefs and behaviors I consciously or unconsciously modeled my own behavior after. I cannot say that in reality I wanted to be exactly like them, nor can I tell you now why I thought it would be such a great idea to hold them in such high regard- it just happened that way. You don't pick your parents and frequently your favorite professor is someone who stumbles into your life- you do not pick him out of a catalogue. I do think though that this tells you a great deal about a person's personality and what they respect, hold in high esteem, and feel comfortable with. People may dislike some of their parents behavior, may even claim to have little in common with their parents, but their choice of what behavior to model their own after (or to completely abhor and avoid, as the case may be) says a lot about them. The same goes for the subsequent strong relationships with professors, bosses, etc. If you admire friendliness and goo d humor combined with a strong work ethic, chances are your favorite law school professor will have these qualities.
The final group are the heros that are the personal heros (not personality heros). I think this group is most open to fluctuation. At any given point this group tends to shift given what a person would most like to do with their own life. Unlike the first group, this group has little to do with what a person believes is the greatest value for society (unless that is their particular bag of doritos), bur rather has more to do with what they want to achieve with their own life. I reflect on this in the sense that there were times in my life where I might have cited Henry Kravis or some other self made millionaire, Alan Greenspan, or even Bill Gates. Earlier times where I was intensely interested in mainstream politics where I may have picked some Senator or judge or former president that I admired. Recently I would probably pick the authors of books I most recently read and liked like William Styron or Hunter S. Thompson or perhaps comedians like Bill Murray or Steve Martin who I particularly admire. I might even say John Grisham-- the lawyer turned best selling novelist. This is not a tremendous departure for me I suppose since in grade school I had a devotion to Dave Barry books that was near fanatical.
I am not sure what it all means, but I do think it is a window it the person we are and the person we would like to become.
Comments