Shrines of the Mind: Living With the Greats
Lives without heroes are depraved as well as deprived
Summon your heroes. Array them in your household shrine. Name them. Are they many or few, ancient or modern, known or received? Why these and not others? Do they inspire or intimidate, inspect or ignore? Do you heed them or hide from their gaze?
We are whom we honor. Our reverence defines us. So does lack of reverence. Lives without heroes are depraved as well as deprived: narcissistic, small, stupid. Autochthony is the dream of insecurity: I made my self by myself! The hero-less are too fearful to acknowledge their debt to predecessors. “The best thing I did was choose the right heroes,” said Warren Buffett, whose solidity glows.
Ours is not an age of heroes, so we may keep mum about our constellation, lest we be viewed as dependent, humble, losers. America’s chosen leader is a swaggering bad-boy sneerer who brandishes sentences beginning “I alone.” He honors none – not Jesus, the Pope, prior Presidents; especially none who gave their lives for their beliefs – who would be so stupid! Sardonic skepticism is a la mode. Praise for someone’s character is met with the scoff, “Yeh, right.” “No one is a hero to his valet,” quipped a courtier of the Sun King. Ubiquitous inevitable electronic communications have made us all valets. The dirt will out!
Our heroes measure our moral worth. Those with none have none. Others may revere their heroes yet ignore them when inconvenient. Count me among these. I’m all for Jesus except when he scowls at me. Likewise, Shakespeare, Thoreau, Henry James, Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Saint Francis, Lincoln – my shrine brims with luminaries whose example exhausts. Who could be so copious, generous, industrious, brave – it is too much to ask! I vow mightily to lift my game – then shirk or goof off.
We value in heroes qualities we wish we had more of. They reflect where we’ve room for improvement. That’s why we tend to adulate others in our line: athletes honor athletes, saints saints, soldiers soldiers. My heroes are moral, musical, makers. They show me the way to be good and/or better at what I do. The greatest souls bow their heads in deference. Beethoven on his deathbed eagerly read through Handel’s works, which he’d just been given. “I can learn so much from these,” he told visitors, knowing he would never write another note.
Heroes call us out of ourselves. “To believe in the heroic makes heroes,” said Disraeli. Being tiny by comparison makes us large in possibility. “All my life I’ve compared myself to Christ,” says Estragon to Vladimir in Waiting for Godot. It’s a laugh line – a bum comparing himself to Christ! – or is it? Shouldn’t we all judge our performance against the best? I’m a better writer than many, but than Shakespeare? Give me a break!
Heroes console. They too were disappointments – to themselves. All could have been and done so much more! But they ran out of time, strength, courage, chance. Greatness adjudges itself poor and poverty great: a paradox.
Reverence tends its heroes tenderly. We all have feet of clay – so what? I do not want to know about Lincoln’s sex life or Shakespeare’s bunions. I grant they were human, even Jesus – that’s what’s inspiring, their likeness to me. If they achieved so much, why not I? "A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer," said Emerson, a believer in heroes.
My heroes protect my pathetic pride. Their volumes stand like sentinels on my shelves. They make me better than I am. Let me live a life worthy of their regard.