F ³: Heroes and Illusions

No one is perfect. More than that, everyone will eventually let you down if you insist on holding them to impossible standards. Yet we all have moments of hero worship, I suspect. Whether it’s someone we know in real life or a public figure or celebrity, we sometimes feel a sense of connection and admiration that makes us feel good: about them, about ourselves, even about the world at large.

For the purposes of today’s post, though, I’m really talking about people we know from afar. Personal relationships are entirely different kettle of fish.

Here’s the thing : it hurts to discover that the trust you placed in someone was ill-founded. Even if they’re just “someone on the internet.”

And yet it feels like it’s bound to happen. We live in a world where the 24 hour social media machine continually reveals things about people that we didn’t necessarily want to know. Sometimes those revelations are true, sometimes they are baseless. It’s a letdown when someone you admired turns out to be not so admirable.

All this is to say that there are certain people whose presence in the world makes me feel good and I would like to draw a big circle around them to protect them from this fate. In other words, I am begging the universe that we never find out some horrible scandal about these folks. Is it too much to ask that to have a few wholesome people to believe in and enjoy?

I hereby declare that I never want to learn truly horrible things about the following people:

Mr. Rogers

Jimmy Carter

The guy from We Rate Dogs

The fellow who runs the Muppet History account

And that’s just for starters. I’m sure I’ll think of more later. It does concern me that I don’t have any women on this list. I wonder if that means anything?

Hmm.

Now, sometimes there are people out there we truly don’t like whose foibles and character flaws come to light. And it might be natural to feel justified as the truth comes out. But, honestly, after the last 24 hours, I’m exhausted.

I might just retreat into the world of cats, dogs, otters, and Muppets for a while.

How about you? Are there some people whose existence just makes you feel better, like an oasis in a troubled world? Would you like to feel one hundred per cent confident that you’ll never learn something truly horrible about them? Or is it just me?

Let me know.

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