Do you remember having a hero? Watching that special person, be it a sports figure, or a family member, admiring them, wanting to be them, knowing that all was right in the world because that person was there?
Do you remember the day it all came crashing down? The day the feet of clay on the golden statue were revealed? Some statues just start to lean a little; others fall to the ground in a thunderous crash. The result is the same. Ideals are crushed; people’s hopes, dreams and trust are smashed to small little pieces. Mostly they can be rebuilt, patched back together good as new. Good as new, except for that one tiny little chip that you can never find no matter how you scour the ground where the statue fell.
It’s an important experience to watch your heroes shrink to normal size. It’s traumatic and steals your breath but it’s necessary. It’s best if it happens naturally, the day your mother becomes a grandma, the day your dad claps you on the shoulder and congratulates you on your win, your accomplishment, your best day ever. Sometimes it happens harsher than that. Sometimes the façade is torn away in one fell sweep that leaves bare your hero, broken and shattered, lying scattered at your feet.
Yet it’s still a good thing. It prepares you for the disappointments in life. The day you realize your best friend is a petty do-gooder who’s secretly judged you AND found you wanting all your friendship. The day you look into your childhood sweetheart’s eyes and realize that childhood is over and this grown boy before you doesn’t really love you the way you thought you loved him. The day your child tells you to leave her alone, that you aren’t really the mother she wanted all her life. It prepares you for these days. It doesn’t insulate you from them but you’re not as shocked as you might have been had you not seen the feet of clay before.
It prepares you for another type of shock. Sometimes through no fault of their own people become idols to others. Sports figures deal with this but so do bosses, friends and coworkers. There’s a pressure to being a hero. An honorable person can’t go around being selfish and petty and having shitty days. An honorable person can’t have wants and needs of his own. They can’t be who they want, they have a unwanted obligation to others to be the hero. So they sneak off. They create places, ideals and alter egos of their own to feel normal, to feel not beholden to be a certain way around others. It’s why people slum. It’s why they hang out with people you’d not expect them to. It’s why men cheat on their wives and why wives do also. It’s a difficult thing to just let someone be who they are.
Is it any wonder they have feet of clay? No. Does it hurt to find out that someone you idolize and envision as a hero does. Yes. Very much.
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