I need a hero. Well first, let me say where I am. I’ve been embarking on a playful, yet sincere, journey in search of my preferred identity. It’s been a whimsical and insightful path, telling me more about myself by revealing what I don’t already know. What I learned is that my life, and this is possibly true of most human lives, is like a lightbulb. What I want or expect is a spotlight. All the things I didn’t know about me and I hadn’t defined drew away from the focus and intensity of my life and experiences. I started by first defining how to outline an idea such as “who I am”. Then I chose details and qualities I care for most in myself to accentuate. If you haven’t seen the previous post yet, please go back and read it.
Now I have a general but still concise description of how I want to experience myself and how I want to behave. I will slowly put things in place to make this more real for myself. Making it “real” matters. This goes for actualizing any type of idea, particularly something as close to home and nebulous as identity. What is this person you’re trying to become actually like? As I’ve said before I am doubling down on traits I’ve already found in myself. Because of this, I have all the experiences and natures needed to make this shift. What else informs this personality though?
A Hero Will Save Us
If you want to change a culture you change its heroes. This goes the same for oneself. Heroes, celebrities, and influencers aren’t an arbitrary phenomenon. Mentors like this exist as part of the social structure to help cohere a set of ideals into the image of a person. If I want to change myself I’m going to need to choose my heroes carefully. I need to look for inspiration. Now I said that making this “real” is important, but fictional heroes are sufficient for this. I am looking to inform an idea or create a model. It is only necessary to flesh out enough detail to draw an example narrative or set of qualities from, regardless of if this exists in flesh or not.
Now an important disclaimer. It is my opinion that people are not to be worshiped. Placing someone like a hero or mentor on too high a pedestal regardless of who it is or what your relationship is a bad idea. To them, it is far too great a risk of disappointment and for a living person too great a pressure for them to live up to. To hold a person in high regard doesn’t require idolizing them. Also, it’s dangerous. Since I am going to emulate these people to some degree, I want to avoid thinking that they’re perfect, because no one is. It’s far to easy to take on bad habits from people with good influence because of bias and the halo effect. So for the sake my own psychological safety I’m looking towards these people, not looking up to them.
Discovering Heroes
So the question is, what heroes inspire me toward the image of the person I want to be? I will answer this question with two more questions. First, who do I admire that has done what I want to do? Second, who do I admire that has been what I want to be? Once that is answered, I ask what aspects of that person or character I should emulate or draw from. This answer leads to the mentor I will seek. Now it’s hard to know how someone considers themselves or what their internal narrative or experience of life is like. However, I can figure out how they were considered by others, what their life narrative was like and take a general glance at their quality of life. For the sake of this, I will simply draw upon what applies closest to the traits I decided I want to focus on in myself.
Self Image
Now I have to decide who embodies the “warrior poet” archetype that I want to adopt as my primary self-image? Who that I admire has been what I’ve wanted to be and done what I’ve wanted to do? My personal mission and ideology are deeply rooted in a concept I’ve been developing since I was 13. It’s actually the same concept I’m using to build this identity framework from. It focuses on self-development and community works. I would look for a mentor, real or fictitious, who also fought for a similar aim but with a poetic way of acting through it.
Let’s Get On a Call to Discover Your Heroes
Internal Narrative
Regarding my internal narrative, I want my life to read off as a quest. A quest is when one embarks to discover or achieve something. The path is beset by challenges, but the boon of the quest item/action always proves to be greater than first assumed when discovered. Having a worthwhile mission alone can accomplish this. However, this target while powerful isn’t human enough for what I’m trying to accomplish. To really model after and learn from someone, I’ll take the time to discover someone who has embarked on a mission. Ideally, this would be a mission similar to my own and lived their life as a quest. Again, this can be a fictional person as well as actual. Actual is still preferred simply for the sake of how realistically I can adopt some good habits.
Quality of Life
I am seldom happy without some type of challenge. It’s much less that I don’t want a boring life as much as I dislike when things are too easy. Constantly growing through challenges is my natural propensity, so I will look for a hero who demonstrates being graceful under and even welcoming to life’s challenges. This suits very well with the warrior poet label and quest narrative (these are all simultaneously pre-existing aspects of myself after all) so it’s very cohesive so far. For this to work, I need to welcome challenges, but they need to be challenges that are in line with my goals. I can’t just be picking up chess games and Rubik’s cubes simply because they are there. I need to avoid diverting myself from my “quest”. This is where it’s easier said than done. The question is, who can teach me this? What mentor figure could I learn this technique from?
Behaviors
In my opinion, finding a behavioral hero or mentor is the hardest. So much of what makes a person uniquely them is the amalgam of their behaviors and how they express themselves. It’s hard to simply point at a single person and say “yep, that’s me all over” when it comes to behaviors. This means that for this also, you may model one behavior from one individual or several behaviors from a group of heroes. For this reason, I’m going to prioritize the behaviors I listed from most important to me to least so that I have some level of focus in my search. In this case, after looking over my list from the previous post I’d look first for a hero or mentor figure shows courage in adversity, then compassion over confrontation, followed by gregariousness in social situations and discipline over spontaneity.
Who Is That Masked Man?
So the challenge here is this: I have no idea who I have just described. The person or persons who fit the description of the hero I’m looking for is still unknown to me. The trick now is to find out who this person is and learn more about them, taking what applies and leaving the rest. In the meantime, I will create a fictitious avatar as a place holder for all of the things I described above. A sort of image projection of my Eidolon. In the past, I performed my music and poetry under the name “Dimas” so I’m going to simply give this image the same name. Dimas will represent the elements of self I’m hoping to embody.
In the end, this still isn’t “real” until I’ve found a realistic or actual person to emulate myself after. In an ideal situation, I would have had a hero in mind, but this is going to require a little research Regardless, this all lays the groundwork for what I’m going to do next. I’ve spent a lot of time crystallizing the idea. Now I’m going to do actual work to build a tool to better visualize where I want to take my life. It will hopefully help me to actively focus in on my habits, my goals, and my progress. More in that post, but until then, have a great time discovering who you are.
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