— Mom, I’m Sorry (@Mom_Im_Sorry) August 9, 2017
This guy knows a hero when he sees one!
It’s another superhero alert–this one jokingly, to talk about how to warn people of danger. Don’t be a pretentious douchebag: if you believe in hell as an actual reality, for example, you should totally warn people about it, but there’s more than one way to have that conversation. If I don’t believe in it, you screaming at me probably won’t back my spirit away from the cliff I can’t see. It’s the same with suicide, alcohol abuse, or a brick on the street that might make a guy stumble. You come off as a jackass when you think you’re somehow special, somehow better than someone else.
“I’m not a jackass, I’ll be fine.”
You may think you’re not proud, but if you imagine yourself the hero, you are. You become a hero only when you stop thinking of yourself as a hero–when you focus, one hundred percent, on the needs and desires of the ‘rescuee,’ and begin to see them as the protagonist in their own story. You don’t think of yourself as lame, or bad, or a non-hero, either, because self hatred is just a different kind of self-obsession like pride is. No, you just go totally zen, totally wuwei, and stop thinking about yourself at all. You’ve accepted you and moved on. You’re fully engaged and connected in the other person’s story. Then, as you root for them, and find ways to support them, you will become a hero.
That’s the paradox. That’s why some people can say the most ridiculously offensive things, in love, and no one gets mad, and other people can say “your shoe is untied” and sound like conceited a-holes. Want the superpower of warning people? Of counsel? Of tough love?
You must give up your hero image to become a hero.
