Hero

Every culture has a myth, every myth a legend, and every legend a story of uncommon valour. Every culture weaves its tale(s) of the fantastic, the impossible, the inspirational because humanity needs heroes. Humanity needs to believe itself to be heroic. Humanity needs to escape its fallenness, the foul reality of being human.

And so we spin fictions to believe we can be more than the tragedy that is being mortal.

We have often been told, from distant lands and time, that there are heroes in this world: self-sacrificing, noble, upright, courageous. They represent the very best in humanity, those we should all seek to emulate for "there is a hero inside us all". We are told to believe that heroes need not be Gods or Immortals. We marvel at powers beyond comprehension and are taught to regard those as mere metaphors for all mortal possibility. We are asked to see heroism within our grasp, a reality that we can all aspire to. We are told to defy the stars for Fate has no power over heroes. We have become addicts to heroic myths. We are flung into the belief that we can be larger than life, larger than time, larger than history. And across time, the cult of the hero has never faded but has instead grown with greater fanaticism. Heroes existed in history, they exist in the present, they will exist for eternity.

(Eternity... how does one comprehend time beyond the present...?)

We are told we can all be heroes ... if we look inside ourselves

We do not need great acts. We only need to transcend our humanity.

But we never do...

For all of Shakespeare's ingenuity in presenting human nature to us, no where better does he do so than in "Troilus and Cressida." In "Troilus and Cressida" Shakespeare brings to knees the fallen nature of the Greek heroes in the Trojan War. The War is presented nothing as a vain and futile attempt to fulfill a carnal basal desire: sex with Helen of Troy. And thousands die for the desires of two men and the mistakes of many. There are no heroes in "Troilus and Cressida." Love is nothing more than a political game, a ploy, a plot. Love changes its face in an instant. Love is nothing but lust unabased. There are no noble heroes, no self-sacrificing magnanimity. The great Achilles is driven by pride; Ajax panders to ambition, Ulysses is a manipulative schemer. Helen plays her lust-lorn lovers as a cellist his cello.

There are no heroes - then, or now.

We create heroes to shield us from the brutish reality of our post-lapsarian condition, our fall from grace, from the inner darkness we are unable to comprehend, from the beasts that reside in the darkest recesses of our nature. We invent heroes so we can see ourselves in all clarity: self-serving, self-conceited, heinous, violent, war-like, basal and degenerate.

Heroes do not exist. Humanity may lay claim to moments of greatness, individuals etch greatness on tableaus of trumpeted deeds, history may inscribe the valorious acts of men but beneath the sound and fury there is nothing. There is nothing but the feeble, frail, corruptible human person struggling to cope with the necessities and realities of life, struggling to cope with the insecurities that plague, struggling to manage his own mortality. Heroes are creations of a humanity who is so fearful of life's ordinariness, insignificance, loneliness, and nothingness.

There are no heroes in this world, only humans.



I'm sorry for feeling insecure. I'm sorry for being fearful. I'm sorry for caring (too much). I'm sorry for bleeding. I am sorry for not being a hero. I am sorry for being human...