They tell us not to meet our heroes.
Alright.
I disagree.
Absolutely meet your heroes. Yes, they will become mere mortals. Yes, the mystique will be gone. And sure, they may disappoint. That's alright.
We use heroes and role models as portraits of our own dreams and aspirations, so why not shatter the glass? Making them human in our own minds could only remind us of our own personal potential.
It happened like this, more or less:
I was first introduced to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche when I was 20. I was a young, passionate philosophy student, looking for the cause and ideal that spoke to my own experience of the world so far, and in his writing I found a passion that so few other thinkers had exhibited. The ideas were controversial, but not entirely groundless. There was something to look at, something to think about, and when I managed to make it work in my mind, there was something liberating about it. I was hooked. Moreover, I was also keeping the company of a handful of artists and "artists", which gave me plenty of social space to explore how I actually felt about ideas.
At the time, someone also recommended that I read about Nietzsche as well, and not just his work, but I was young and thirsty, and because of school, used to reading the work of the thinkers, and pay less attention to who they actually were.
That was a mistake. Though I never forgot the recommendation, I admit I largely ignored it for ten years. Then something changed.
I had originally gravitated to philosophy at a point in my life when I was having trouble making sense of things. I was 19, and the work involved in studying ideas gave me a sense of hope, made me feel better about feeling "lost" in the world we hear about in the news, among other things.
At 30, following an unfortunate event that forced me to see something I would have been happier never having seen, and once again feeling "lost", I turned back to my bookshelf and playlists, and re-visited the ideas and art that had once made the world make sense. On a whim, if only to occupy myself, I picked up Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography by Julian Young, which I had purchased years before but not yet read (it's a very heavy volume, not conducive to being carried around in my purse and read on a train), and started to read.
Here are my thoughts:
Mr. Young wrote a very artful biography. I was surprised by how delightful it was to sit at a table and read it for hours on end. His narrative is as colourful and sympathetic as it is unforgiving at times. His explanations of the more complex concepts within Nietzsche's writing were fantastic, and I have a better understanding of Nietzsche's work than I ever had a hope of having a decade ago. The biography is honest, fair, and unapologetic. Furthermore, I learned far more about the cultural climate of Western Europe in the second half of the 19th Century than I had expected to. I will read this book again, and likely be as sad to reach the end as I was the first time.
And my thoughts on Nietzsche, himself (albeit, in the years during which he could easily be considered sane):
He was just a man.
Not an entirely unique one, either.
He saw the world through the (ailing) eyes of a depressive who, though pained by illness and physically and politically stifled, was no stranger to beauty, loved life, and thought humanity could do better. (At its simplest)
He wanted to be understood, and was frustrated at being misunderstood and misread.
He changed his mind about things over the years.
He didn't like being used as a pawn in other peoples' agendas.
He had a family and friends. His sister would have made a great movie villain.
He didn't want to be an idol, per se.
He had his heart broken.
He may have eaten all of 5 vegetables in his life.
Obviously I could go on with opinions and cursory critiques of details and excerpts and pros and cons and lessons learned and final judgments or lack thereof, but that's not what spoke to me here.
I found a certain measure of peace in acknowledging that the great people whose ideas, in their own ways, shape or bolster my own, were just people, just regular human beings (the more interesting and artistic of which I'm finding, curiously, happened to be depressive by our standards) who went about their days not entirely unlike myself, who by writing down the things that went through their heads joined a community of people asking questions, proposing solutions, playing with ideas, changing their minds. They had good days and bad days, and they had dark times that made them think of how they fit into this mess of a world, and bright times when it all seemed to make sense, and by speaking out, staked their place in history.
If I'm right about this, I can feel a little better about my own place in the world, feel a little more confident in making my own mark, asking my own questions and contributing my own thoughts.
I'm not saying anyone will remember me long after I'm gone - I may never say anything profound in all my time here. However, I do believe that as a species, we can do better and be better, and I do believe we need to have the kinds of conversations, curious and honest exchanges of ideas, that allow us to explore different ways to achieve that. Perhaps an early step in this direction is to meet and humanize our heroes, and stop timidly hiding in the shadows, quotes and '-isms' of our idols.
