We Are Surrounded by Heroes
Advice for 2024: Seek (and find) those people and ideals you can admire, look up to, learn from, be inspired by, take refuge in and lean into when the winds of chaos come swooping by.
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024
Funny story. Awhile back, I looked at the calendar and said to a friend, “Wow, it’s only the 8th of January. Usually this month seems to fly by. I can’t believe it’s only the 8th!”
Just now, as I was writing the date for this “daily appreciation Substack,” I had the exact opposite reaction. What?! It’s the 23rd of January already?! LOLOL
Heroes. I’ll skip the feminized version of the word, because in my mind, amazing people who do the right thing when it’s incredibly hard and while facing immense pressure to quietly comply are simply Heroic.
Where would we be without our Heroes? Not anywhere good, I’m guessing. Human societies have generated heroes (fictional and real) without fail, in every generation, with the greatest of them morphing into mythic character remembers for centuries to come. Our rooster was named after just one such hero: Beowulf.
Beowulf earned his name around the age of two, after he survived his second monster attack. The first was when he disappeared from our property, having been chased over the fence by a dog, and we thought we’d lost him for good. The forests around here are filled with raccoons and coyote packs, so his odds of survival were pretty low.
The next morning, I woke up before dawn and went out to look around, just in case he’d come back. As I stood in the front driveway, in the cold morning air, I was shocked to hear his crow — coming from far, far away.
Slipping on a pair of flip flops, and wearing nothing but a robe over my very naked body, I took off, hoping to find him before he stopped crowing. Several country driveways later, a woman saw me coming down her dirt driveway and opened her door, saying, “Are you looking for a rooster?”
According to her, he’d managed to escape a double raccoon attack about an hour earlier by flying into the neighbor’s property with several big dogs. As we came through the forest between the two homes, emerging into a lovely garden filled with the melodious tones of barking dogs, another woman opened her sliding glass door and said, “Are you looking for a rooster?”
There he was (nameless, at the time) sitting on top of her pick up truck, where the dogs (and the raccoons) couldn’t get him, a look of “OMG” on his face. If you know roosters, you know they don’t typically like to be picked up. They have, um, their honor to consider! But that morning, as I held Beowulf (still nameless at the time) in my arms, he buried his head into my neck and didn’t move an inch until we were home and he heard his girls.
He got his name, after he survived an attack by a Bald Eagle, being narrowly rescued just as the great bird was about to chow down on more than just feathers. It was then that a friend mentioned Beowulf, who went into the woods to face a monster (twice) and survived! So, here we are, many hundreds of years later, still remembering the epic bravery of Beowulf, bravely going forth to face a great and dangerous monster who is terrorizing the community — not once, but twice!
Beowulf was a reminder to our family, on a daily basis, that scary monsters can be met with strength and bravery. The same can be said of Dobby, our Boston Terrier.
We always tell people, “This is Dobby. He masquerades as a Boston Terrier in public, and he definitely has his clothes!” For Harry Potter lovers, you know what this means. Dobby is a House Elf who is enslaved by a terrible wizarding family, but his owner is tricked into giving him a sock, which releases him from his enslavement. So, why did we give this name to our Boston Terrier?
As a reminder. Dobby, in the Harry Potter series, taught us all many lessons, but most of all, he reminded us that we are all equal. Many humans believe they are superior to dogs, and many dogs are treated like second class citizens. I wanted a name that would forever remind us that Dobby is our equal in all the ways that matter. He has the intellect, curiosity, and capacity to love of any 3 year old human child. He is immensely loyal, forgiving, protective, devoted, and communicates quite effectively. Dobby is, to me and many people, one of the great heroes of the Harry Potter world, and we have had countless conversations within the family and with friends or strangers out in the world, about the importance of equality and respect for those who are different from ourselves, as a result of his name. Thank you, Dobby.
There are, of course, many heroes around us in the human world, as well. The question we need to ask ourselves is this: “How much time do we give to those we admire and how much energy is given to those who harm the world?”
Over the years, I’ve watched social media platforms and communities change dramatically. We all have, and it’s obvious all of us can get caught up in sharply negative emotional spirals within these communities, wasting many hours on content and interactions that don’t truly serve us. We’ve all done it. The algorythms are designed to figure out what triggers us and send us more of it, and so it goes.
AND — I’M SO GRATEFUL TO KNOW THIS!
I believe one of the greatest threats to humanity today is distraction. Imagine you’re in the wilderness, lost, with very little survival gear, and the sun will soon be setting. If your cell phone (which has no cell service) beeps at you, reminding you it’s time to practice Spanish on Duolingo, and you sit down to practice your Spanish…because you’ve forgotten your life is on the line…you’re more likely to die. Right? In the same way, people living in comfortable first world societies are being intentionally distracted from a tsunami of dangers, threats, and monsters rolling toward us at breakneck speed. But, why? Who could possibly stand to gain from a civilization that foolishly ignores the blizzard coming over the mountains, the well going dry, the fox in the henhouse, and the totalitarian gestapo who just dropped by to relieve you of your guns, fertilizer, organic homegrown seeds, and every book you have on herbal medicine?
That’s the question, isn’t it? And, sadly — the list of evil-doers is overwhelmingly long. Which is why was NEED our heroes.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of my heroes. He spent decades fighting against big corporate polluters, after vaccinating all of his kids he had the moral fortitude and humility to reconsider his choices, learn a great deal, and form new ideas about health, healing and disease. Throughout Covid, he partnered with other brave men and women, his book “The Real Anthony Fauci” is beautifully written and exquisitely cited, making it immune from legal attacks (meaning, everything in it is verifiably true and unconstestable in court), and now he’s putting his life on the line to offer the American People something we desperately need (and barely deserve) — a truly great Presidential Candidate.
And so begins, my hero series. From time to time, I’m going to share with you one of my heroes. Those people who, in the face of great challenge, stay engaged. Because, that’s what they all share in common. Engagement! Trying. Getting up and doing it again. And again. This way and that way and another way and just plain…doing life! These people are admirable on so many levels, and I appreciate each and every one of them for providing me with a lifeline of sorts.
But, I’m not the only one with heroes, am I? Please, in the comment section, share with us one of your heroes. Let us spend our time relishing the myriad people in the world (now and in the past) who offer us a shining light and a worthwhile example of a life well lived. Because, soon enough, our tanks will be refilled, our energy restored, our hope renewed, our faith expanded, and our confidence will surge — causing us to want to get up and start doing, too!