Episode 16: If Your Favorite Hero Stood in Your Shoes

[00:00:00] Seth: We make literally thousands of decisions every day, ranging from where we place our foot as we walk to what we'll have for dinner. Most of our lives, we live within some kind of spectrum of normal as far as those decisions that we make, but we can all admire certain characters in our favorite stories that live outstanding lives.

Or we may know people in our own lives that live incredible lives that we admire. And so I would ask you, do you have a favorite hero? I think a lot of us can think of like a comic book hero. I mean, if someone were to ask you that question, you'd probably think of a, I don't know, Superman, Batman, whatever.

Or you might think of like a a grandma, grandpa, a father, a mother. Now, what if your favorite hero were to stand in your shoes? Imagine if you had like a soul swap where the mind and soul of your favorite hero inhabited your body. What would that person start doing? And what would they stop doing? You might have a hard time limiting that hero down to one person.

I know I've got a handful of different heroes. Or, or characters or people in my life that I'd be ecstatic for them to stand in my shoes and that's okay. Sometimes there's more than one person that we can admire and there's bits and pieces of them that we would love to see in our ideal person. I mean, for, for me, I, I mean, I can think of real world examples of people that I admire deeply, but as far as fictional heroes go probably my all time favorite story is the Lord of the Rings.

And I know I'm not alone there. It's hugely popular for a reason, but the reason I love it is because I don't think I've ever watched or read a story with more admirable characters. Now I don't want to assume that everybody knows the plot of Lord of the Rings, although I'm sure most of you do, but so I'm going to quickly describe it.

It's set in a world of fantasy, with elves and wizards and men and small people called hobbits. And it centers around Well, all of these people in different scenarios, but there's an evil overcoming the land. And there's, there's a ring associated with this evil that can make that evil capable of overcoming the entire land.

And this ring, the, the task of the characters in this story is to take that ring to the place it was created, which is a volcanic mountain in the heart of the lands of the evil force and to destroy it there. And anyways, it falls upon some of these small people to take this all powerful weapon to the heart of hell, basically, and to destroy it.

So you've got the hobbits, which are the small people who are small in stature. They're physically weak. And they have oversized feet. They've never seen true danger and neither has anyone from where they're from. They don't belong on a quest for heroes, yet they find themselves on a quest nonetheless.

They have every disadvantage and they're fighting the greatest evil known to their world. So I love, I love all the characters pretty much in that, in that story, but I especially love two. First would be Samwise Gamgee. Who is not only one of these hobbits, but he's also the gardener to the hobbit who has chosen to take the ring to Mordor.

He doesn't even want to go on this adventure, but he swears to help. And in the end, they succeed. There's no training montage where, where suddenly these small hobbits become jacked warriors. They succeed through simple perseverance and resilience to hardship. But the thing that moves me about the character Sam is that his superpower is loyalty.

No one wanted this adventure less than him, and when, when Frodo, the, the hobbit designated to carry this ring, when he becomes unreasonable due to the evil effects of this ring that he's carrying, Sam doesn't abandon him, even at the point at which he tells him to go away. And Sam still is keeping an eye out for him.

He's the ultimate underdog in the entire story. And the moment that moves me the most is when Frodo, who near the end, he's there on the slopes of Mount Mordor. He's overcome by this evil ring's power and it makes him collapse. And Sam's there and he says, I may not be able to carry the ring for you, but I can carry you.

And then he almost literally drags his dearest friend across the finish line to get him to this point where he can destroy this weapon that will determine the fate of everything. And the second character I just wanted to bring up was was Aragorn, who has literally inherited all of the best genes from an unbroken line of Royal superhumans.

He's the rightful heir to the throne of the most powerful kingdom in their world He has you know, since he is the heir it essentially means he has the most material wealth Even though he doesn't live with that wealth and he's inherited generations of wisdom from his forefathers The thing about aragorn that's so incredible is not his capacity to slay monsters Or his inherent leadership qualities, but rather in spite of all of his advantages, it's his humility that makes him so admirable.

The character can slay dragons and inspire men, but at the end of the series, when he's being crowned a king, he walks up to the hobbits, who are all bowing to him, since he's been crowned king. And he turns to them and he says, my friends. You bow to no one and he turns and he bows to the hobbits in almost every respect his inferiors and he honors them above himself now granted the the hobbits earned that especially from from the perspective of where they had to come from and their Inherent disadvantages and his acknowledgement of that.

It's just so infrequent that we see that kind of humility From somebody that's such a deserving leader that it it's, it's moving. I think that's why he's such an incredible character. His, his superpower is not his ability to slay monsters, but rather his his ability to be humble. I think if my heroes were in my shoes.

They probably wouldn't let discouragement stop them. They'd probably be the kind of friend that pulls other friends across the finish line. I don't think they would see things in my life from the same eyes that I do. I think they'd pursue status less and friendship more. I think they'd be more forgiving.

I think they'd be more loving. Maybe they wouldn't have such lofty goals as I've given myself. Maybe they would eliminate All the excesses in my life and adopt a simpler way of living and focus more on the people around them. Or maybe they just carry on more or less the same life that I have, but just be better people.

I think we all have a dragon in our life that we need to slay. I think it's worth asking, what would our hero do about it? Maybe those dragons are relationships that need mending. Fears that need to be overcome. Addictions we need to kick, apathy we need to overcome, things we need to forgive, fixations we need to let go of, or more.

I don't know what hero you would choose to take your place, but I know they would probably do something different. When I was a kid, I remember it was really popular for a while to wear a wristband that said WWJD, which it stood for What Would Jesus Do? Nowadays, I think it's said more in jest than in sincerity, but it doesn't really diminish the beauty of that question.

You may not be religious, but I'm sure you could replace Jesus with someone or some idea of a person that is, well, I mean, Christ is sort of the personification of perfection, but I mean, what would Spider Man do? What would, what would Oprah do? I don't know. Pick your poison. Jesus is a pretty good one though.

You may even be religious. But Jesus may feel like too far of a jump to emulate, since we effectively understand him to be. The embodiment of perfection. So maybe it's worth asking yourself, what would my grandpa do? What would my aunt do? What would what would Superman do in my shoes? What would my favorite person do?

We learn how to live our lives from other people. So pick your heroes wisely because they can dictate your future. The people that inspire you and move you, the people that you want to be like. I have the potential to have a major impact on the direction your life goes. I think too often we choose to emulate rock singers and actors and pop singers and athletes and, and more that are, they're succeeding in writing music.

And making movies and playing sports, they're succeeding in making tons of money, but all too frequently, I think we all can see that many, if not most of them are utterly failing at living fulfilling lives or actually making the world better. If you pick any famous pop singer and you look at their last 10 songs or so and try to break out by percentage, the number of songs that are inspired by either a negative Or mindless partying.

I think you'll find that it's probably close to a hundred percent. I think those songs move us because negative emotion is what we know best. And positive experiences are so easily taken for granted. Don't get me wrong. I can really appreciate a sad pop song that. And as many of them do resonate with me, but there's more out there, there's more options for us.

There's more, there's, there's, there's people out there for us to emulate that can actually make our lives better. Sometimes I wonder if these famous or rich people that donate so much to charities, which, you know, nothing, nothing against donating to charities. That's a good thing, but sometimes it feels almost like an atonement for being terrible examples otherwise.

It's almost like they're paying for an indulgence. If you're not, if you're not familiar with that, it. It was a practice that helped lead Martin Luther to nail his 95 thesis on the door of the church in Wittenberg, which was the beginning of a major rift in the Catholic church at the time. It launched the Reformation, and that was the practice of paying the church for forgiveness of sins.

So basically, if you had enough money, you could say, Hey, I'm going to pay for this indulgence, and they'd give it to you. They no longer practice that. They've done away with it. Thank heavens. But it really does feel sometimes like people's efforts to do something good are compensating for generally not doing much good in their lives at all.

So make your heroes somebody that is succeeding in life. Make it something other than money and fame. The fictional heroes of stories that we love are almost never motivated by money beyond its usefulness to help further their goals. Effectively, you're just a person on a boat sailing the vast ocean that is life.

And when life comes to an end You'll see the white sand on that beach and while you sail the storms of life Remember that your destination is set you're gonna end up at the same place But the way you sail that ocean is up to you Some of us are gonna sail through more storms than others The joy is not really in how many storms you avoid but how you sailed when you're in them So did you succeed in making all that money but become a villain in the process?

Or did you live the life of a popper, end up a hero? Become the characters that you admire from stories. Stories are rich and fulfilling. And let them lead you to your potential. Let them help define your success. If I get rich in life, that'll be great. I would love it. But I want to Reach the end of my life knowing that I gave it up to others while I was living.

I want to leave this earth knowing I left a legacy for my children to be proud of and the wisdom for them to succeed in life, not simply money. I hope that someday when we imagine our heroes in our shoes, we don't see much of a difference.