Heroes for sale
After Campbell´s work “The hero with a thousand faces” became popular in “Star Wars” saga, the world started to think about heroes. One of the most commom sense is that everybody is a hero. We born and grow up, study, get married, we pass trought a lot so we can be considered heroes can´t we?
No.
At least I don´t think so. There is a specific task that the hero must have in order to be called a hero. He must enter in the adventure. The adventure can take him by force but to remain there and live it is the brand of heroes. If you don´t get in the adventure, you are not being heroic at all.
We know that, by the way. We know when we are avoiding something we must do by fear, desire of confort or any other excuse. In that moment we say “no” to the adventure. The thing about the hero is that he do something. He or she, acts.
The main problem in act is that it drives us to an unconscious true: we will die. It is a strange thing that happens to heroes: when they fall in the adventure they feel life at it maximum and at the same time they star to realize their death.
Not all of us are ready to face that. Enter the adveture is to say “yes” to life. And that sounds nice and soft. But say that, means “yes” to life as a hole. And that includes pain, death, doubts, fear. Heroes open themselves to this. To life at it is.
So if your adventure “must be” you are getting out of the heroic experience. Heroes bend themselves to life and to the adventure. Perhaps one of the mos significant phrases I´ve heard is from “The lord of the rings”:
“It´s a dangerous business Frodo, going out your door. You take a step on the road and if you don´t keep your feet there´s no telling where you might be swept off to”.
Why it is dangerous? Because life is dangerous. All we need to do in order to die is being alive. To walk the road of adventure is to say hello to death. Can you do it? Can you deal with the notion that you don´t define the road, is she that defines you. Can you give who you are now away in order to a new you born? That is the danger: in one way or the other you will die.
So the new wave of “heroes of daily life” is the denial of the heroic adventure. That´s why not all of us are heroes. The hero must face it journey and not all of us do it. And we know that.
All of us have a potential to be heroes? Yes. We all have a calling to the adveture in one way or another, in one moment or another. And it can be to very simple things like those of the heart. To say: “I love you” can be a heroic deed. The main ideia is learn to identify the adventure, hear the call. And then, to act.
You doesn´t need to do “great things” to be a hero. But you need the enter the adventure and go all the way through it. Die and reborn a new person, that´s the purpose of the heroe´s journey.
