As I sat in the movie theater watching Justice League, I thought a lot about the idea of a hero in the context of 2017.
Generally, we've thought of heroes as possessing some kind of special power--or larger than life. We've confused the powerful and influential for people we should look up to. Yet, as we've seen in the retelling of a lot of the comic book stories on screen, our heroes aren't always purely good, nor are they as good at being people as they are at being powerful.
This year has seen a toppling of those heroes the likes of which we've never seen before--Hollywood Actors and Directors, Former Presidents, US Senators, Would Be Senators, Midas List VCs, and yes, Confederate Generals. We're being forced to reckon with our ties to everyone from slave-owning forefathers to Bill Clinton.
We look up to heroes because we see them exhibiting power over others--yet it's this power they often seen to struggle to control and use appropriately.
As 2017 winds down to a close in the next two months, perhaps we can all think about what kind of heroes we'd like to have in 2018. As many heroes fell this year, many others found the heroes in themselves--taking to the streets in protest for the first time, sharing their stories of mistreatment, and taking the time to listen and learn about the struggles of others.
What kind of hero do you want to be? Will you risk speaking up on behalf of others when it isn't popular? Will you be vulnerable? Will you admit when you were wrong, and try to make up for when you fell short with people?
Not all of us have a cape. Not all of us are rich.
But we can all be heroes.