Heroes are flawed, often deeply. Wounded. Maybe broken.
What if that's what it takes to make someone into the kind of person who can become a hero?
What if the person you'd never consider inviting to your dinner party turns out to be the one with the skills and the personality to save your life one day?
Bear with me here. The following diversion is relevant.
If there were no other reason for trying to save the endangered species of our planet, consider how many of our best healing medicines have come from nature. What if the habitat we wipe out is the source of the microorganism that will eventually cure cancer? Billions of people in the tropics owe their lives and health to a drug developed from a microorganism found in a soil sample taken from a Japanese golf course!
Discovered in the late-1970s, the pioneering drug ivermectin, a dihydro derivative of avermectin—originating solely from a single microorganism isolated at the Kitasato Intitute, Tokyo, Japan from Japanese soil—has had an immeasurably beneficial impact in improving the lives and welfare of billions of people throughout the world. [Here's the link, for the record, but it's a long and technical paper.]
What if the personality traits we're trying to eliminate turn out to be exactly what's needed to face a crisis we can't even see coming? If there were no other reason for respecting those who don't fit into our own insular social groups, consider that they may be the very people we need when the floodwaters rise.
What if the energy, the aggression, and the "toxic masculinity" we're trying so hard to breed out of our boys turns out to be part and parcel of what gives them the strength and the will to take on a hero's work?
I'm sure the men of the "Bikes and Beards" podcast (of which I know nothing beyond what you can see here) did not set out to be heroes. But when Hurricane Helene hit Appalacia, they stepped into that role as if they had been prepared for it. Maybe they had been.
Bikers? With beards and tattoos? Country folk, with guns? Who would you rather come to your rescue? A Hollywood celebrity? A college professor? A Supreme Court justice?
And yet heroes come in all shapes, sizes, and guises. I wouldn't expect Elon Musk to drive a truck full of supplies on mountain roads, but his Starlink system provides essential communication for devastated areas, from Appalacia to the Ukraine.
We need "all sorts and conditions of men." For selfish reasons, if nothing else.
I'm done with expecting heroes to be perfect. But let them be heroic!
