on being un-heroic

There was no escaping superhero movies in the 2010s..

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I watched an interview with Stan Lee, the creator of many of our favorite heroes that we know today from comic books and movies. When he first created Superman, there was no Kryptonite. The Superman series didn’t have much of a plot, since Superman was so..super. So, as writers, they had to create Kryptonite in order to keep the story interesting, and ultimately relatable. His later project, Spiderman, included self-doubt and personal neuroses from the very beginning because of this same logic. The hero needed to have personal problems. They need to feel relatable and human. This is also why I like Spiderman much more than Superman. I find that I can relate to Peter Parker and his complicated life, much more than an omnipotent super hero.

People need to live through the hero in order to feel like they, too, are heroes. Sure, I believe that everyone is capable of hero-ism. But my critique is that everyone seems to want to be a hero, but not accept the moments of life that are decidedly unheroic, shameful, or boring.

I just find the attitude of striving for hero-ism to be lacking. What happens when you fail miserably? What happens when you fail over and over again? If you follow the hero narrative for yourself, you will just see it as a setback to your ultimate goal. The real hero would persevere, right?

Or, what happens when the hero achieves the goal, saves the innocent people, or saves the girl/boyfriend? Or an even more devastating situation for the hero—what if there is a time of relative peace and the hero isn’t needed?

The hero always has a mission. I think that is the nature of the hero. It feels good to achieve goals, to be resilient in the face of setbacks, to persevere when it seems like there is no hope. Surely, not all of these qualities can be bad. They are under question though, because how can we account for all the things in life that don’t fit neatly into the hero narrative?

You know what’s un-heroic, but totally necessary?

The feeling of shame.

It’s warm, debilitating, uncomfortable, yet very familiar. Confronting this feeling, especially if it has been repressed for a long time, can literally be a painful experience. When I focus on that feeling, I’m making a lot of space for it. Letting it breathe. The whole process takes some time and concentration, but after allowing myself to confront it over and over again, I feel lighter, more at ease.

What this looks like is literally just sitting there, closing my eyes, and breathing.

I guess this act can be seen as heroic and courageous. It’s not an easy thing to face. For me though, the actual feeling of shame does not feel heroic at all. It feels like I want to melt into a puddle and slide down the drain.

So what’s required from me, then, is a lot of compassion for myself. It’s to be loving in the face of the pain. I’ll accept that I need the hero too, I need that character within me to have the courage to face the intense feelings. And finally, the weirdest one, I probably need shame in some way. Not obsessively, but in the sense that feeling through the repressed shame somehow completes the picture. It makes things whole. To me, there is nothing heroic about shame and that’s ok.

Peace.