Feet Of Clay

I’m not entirely sure what set me off on this train of thought, but I’m noticing a lot about hero worship cropping up in various ways. It probably started a couple of weeks ago when I was mucking about with a MySpace page because a friend had sent me a link to his new blog at www.myspace.com/chriscrudelli – well worth a read if you want the lowdown from a true martial artist – and one of the required formats on the page was to list your heroes. That got me thinking that I don’t actually have any. I have inspirations, for sure – people whose work, spirituality or integrity is something I value and admire, but I just don’t go in for the whole hero worship thing.

Having met many of the major figures in the self-help and spiritual arena over the years, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that there’s no-one who’s got it totally together, whose life works seamlessly and who behaves impeccably every single day. That’s an illusion – and a very real danger spot for those who begin to believe their own publicity – as well as being pretty much a human impossibility. We all have our vulnerabilities, our blind spots and our bad hair days and it’s a cruel joke we play on ourselves when we think everyone else has got it together but us. If you’re alive, you’ll have issues. That’s just the way the story goes. Life is about letting go of the stuff that gets in the way of knowing that there’s a divine perfection within you. In that process you’ll need to have compassion for yourself as you work through your human frailties – it’s about aligning yourself with an inner truth, rather than trying to create an outer facade through rigid control and perfection obsession.

The Brand Beckham phenomenon is a perfect case in point. They are both subject to an almost unimaginable amount of hero worship, not only for their careers, but also for being an allegedly perfect couple (until the wheels fell off in the shape of Rebecca Loos et al). Yet whenever I see them appear in the media I just feel exhausted. Victoria Beckham is the epitome of someone who is dedicated to the ‘trying too hard’ school of style and she never, ever looks happy. Control and rigidity are written all over her face and the staged ‘togetherness’ pics – particularly when their marriage crisis was in full swing – simply smack of desperation to uphold an image rather than a genuine attempt at togetherness. We seem to have reached a societal nadir where we value image above all else. We hero-worship people who are little more than just famous for being famous and a whole generation of children is growing up with the idea that fame is a goal in itself, rather than a by-product of success in your chosen field.

Couple this with the explosion of glossy magazines showing airbrushed celebs with cosmetic enhancements creating a kind of dubious beauty that doesn’t exist in nature, and we’ve created a seriously poor breeding ground for self-esteem, not only for ourselves, but for children who are too young to know any better. At least we’ve accumulated a little life wisdom that allows us the perspective to realise that no-one’s perfect, but what chance do they have when calculated imagery is all they see? Stars have always existed, but they were escapist figures, remote from daily life, and there wasn’t the modern pressure to meet those impossible standards in real life.
I wonder if we’re all yearning for a time when perfection wasn’t the byword and people were more raw, honest and interesting. The huge popularity of the BBC TV show Life On Mars with its unrestrained, testosterone-fuelled 70s detective Gene Hunt, played with gloriously unashamed machismo by Philip Glenister, makes me think so. Of course Gene Hunt’s a complete git and every feminist’s nightmare, but it’s wonderful to see a real character come to life, full of flaws and utterly beguiling in his humanness.

The 70s were fertile ground for recognising that heroes had feet of clay, with the most infamous tale coming from John Lennon’s lengthy sabbatical from his marriage to Yoko Ono, the ‘lost weekend’ period with girlfriend May Pang. One night, drunk on Brandy Alexanders, Lennon was at a gig at the Troubador in LA when – with the kind of twisted genius that alcohol is known for – he came across a clean sanitary towel on the floor, which he decided to wear as a headband. When the waitress refused to serve him, he pulled the “Don’t you know who I am?” card, to which the waitress rather dryly replied, “Yeah, you’re some asshole with a Kotex on his head”. She later went on to muse about what a bummer it is to find out that your hero is an asshole. That’s the downside of hero worship – it’s ultimately going to come a cropper because sooner or later we all do something stupid, no matter how famous we become.

One of my favourite inspirational authors has pushed the boundaries of acceptable behaviour recently. I’ve followed the work of Caroline Myss from the early days before Anatomy OfThe Spirit became a runaway success and was particularly looking forward to her latest work, Entering The Castle, based on the writings of St Teresa of Avila’s extraordinary treatise on the soul, El Castillo Interior. I’m still working my way through the book, but I found her meditation CDs based on that work almost impossible to endure, due to the berating, judgmental and condescending rants that accompany them. Sadly, for me it’s kind of up there with the John Lennon incident – there’s a point at which it might be prudent to realise that perhaps you’re taking yourself a little too seriously and that being contemptuous of your core audience could turn out to be a risky strategy.

This week, take a look at those you might be hero-worshipping, even on the mildest of scales. If you’re comparing yourself to them, by assuming they’ve got it all together and you haven’t, take a closer look. Things are not always as they seem and none of us is perfect in every way. That doesn’t mean you need to look at them negatively or judge them, but that you can see that they have their own struggles and you can love them for that as much as their achievements. A lot of greatness comes from people who are driven to achieve extraordinary things because they’ve had to overcome real difficulties. Know that having compassion for others helps you to have compassion for yourself. Having a blind spot isn’t the problem – not being willing to face it and do something about it is. We may not always get things right and we should just get comfortable with the idea that we’re not meant to be perfect all the time, but it’s the willingness to move forward that really counts. Be kind to yourself this week, learn to love your own frailties and have compassion for those who can’t relax long enough to let themselves just enjoy their own lives, however imperfect they may be.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 16 Apr 07)