A reminder about our heroes

It’s rather tempting to put people we admire on a pedestal.

I do it all the time. My storytelling idol is Anthony Bourdain. He gets a pedestal. I admire Seth Godin’s philosophy, slow and steady pace, and refusal to teach tactics. He too gets a pedestal. I think Kara Swisher, Chase Jarvis, and Chris Savage all have clarity around who they are, why they’re here, and what they want to evangelize in the world. Pedestal’d.

Then there are folks I admire who have turned into friends lately — people like Ann Handley, Andrew Davis, and Doug Kessler to name a few. They get their own special kind of pedestals. Steel reinforced. Polished daily.

Yes, it’s tempting to put those we admire up on a pedestal, which is the metaphorical way of saying that we disassociate who we are from who they are.

“They’ve got it all figured out. I don’t.”

This is broken. This is wrong. This can’t go on.

The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote a series of letters to a young admirer — one who put Rilke on a pedestal. In 1904, while traveling in Sweden, the poet replied to this fan of his with the perfect reminder:

Do you remember how that life yearned out of its childhood for the “great”? I see that it is now going on beyond the great to long for greater. For this reason it will not cease to be difficult, but for this reason too it will not cease to grow.

[Translation: If life is about lifelong improvement, not some final status of “great,” then we must accept that it will always be hard, but take solace in the fact that we will always grow. Also, this implies that nobody, even our heroes, have it easier — a fact Rilke goes on to address next…]

And if there is one more thing that I must say to you, it is this: Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.

Nobody has it all figured out. So go ahead, find your heroes, and get better because of what they’re saying and creating. I know I will, and I know I do. But don’t for a second assume that your heroes are any better than you. It’s simply untrue. And if that’s the case, it leaves us with one question that changes everything:

What if I’m perfectly capable of doing what they do?

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