While there are obviously many different motivations that drive people to achieve happiness and success in the world, and different people get inspiration from different things, one common source that I imagine is prevalent amongst most people is having role models and inspirational people to look up to to try to emulate. Maybe for a young child, this is hearing a famous singer on the radio and wanting to be a star singer someday as well. Or maybe for an aspiring entrepreneur, this is seeing someone like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos and striving to emulate their same work ethic and “outside the box” thinking and innovation. In a book I read earlier this year, Fortitude, by Congressman Dan Crenshaw, who is someone I admire quite a bit, I thought he did a really good job at exploring this idea about finding your heroes to help you strive to be a better person in all walks of life.
Crenshaw refers to this in the book’s chapter, “Who is Your Hero?,” as the idea of hero archetypes. As he explains, people have been looking to heroes, real and fictional, for as long as civilization has existed, and used lessons from them to apply to their own lives to become better versions of themselves. “It’s a very human thing to tell stories of the people, often mythical characters, whom we should learn from.”(37). However, having heroes does not mean looking to one person and idealizing them as the one person who you want to emulate in all ways; everyone, no matter how praise worthy they are, has their own set of faults and unworthy characteristics if one looks past the surface. You might, for example, look at someone like Napoleon Bonaparte or Alexander the Great and admire them for their great leadership abilities, and the influence that they had on the world. Both of them, however, had numerous faults, including a seemingly general disregard for human life in their quests for power. Emulating everything about either of these men would obviously be a bad thing. Hero archetypes, on the other hand, is a more abstract way of thinking about your heroes. As Crenshaw writes, these hero archetypes are “symbols or stories that project a set of ideas, values, and collective knowledge. In another sense, heroes are the visualization for a set of goals you are setting for yourself”(37). Whatever path I’m on in life, there is always someone who has done a better job than me, handled a situation more effectively, or gone farther with fewer resources. Finding these people, and trying to learn their methods and mindsets, can only lead to good things.
After reading Crenshaw’s book, I thought about who some of my hero archetypes would be, and without naming anyone that I know personally, a few of them include:
Bruce Dickinson: The lead singer of my favorite band, Iron Maiden, Bruce is a truly authentic person who tirelessly pursues the things that he is passionate about in life. He had a rather rough childhood, attended boarding school, joined Iron Maiden in his early 20’s, became a professional fencer, earned a commercial pilot’s license, and has continued to produce outstanding albums with the band far into their career. Perhaps what I admire most about Bruce, along with the entire Iron Maiden band, is that they make music exactly the way they want to, without worrying about what anyone else will think. Their songs are about historical figures, historical military battles, epic mythical tales, and even a song about the R101 airship; and despite very little radio play, they have an extremely large and loyal fanbase who love the music they make. Ryan Holiday, the bestselling author on philosophy and stoicism, has claimed that pretty much everything he has learned about writing is from Iron Maiden. People, me included, love the authenticity of Bruce and the band. My hero archetype of Bruce Dickinson that I want to emulate is someone who rigorously pursues their passions, and who shares their interests with the world in my own unique way.
Jocko Willink: A former Navy Seal who hosts a weekly podcast that I have become a big fan of this year, Jocko seems like the epitome of a person with habits and character traits to emulate; he served honorably as a U.S Navy Seal for 20 years, he wakes up at 4:30am every morning(seriously every morning, look at his Instagram account for proof), he runs a successful apparel company, a leadership consulting firm, owns a jiu jitsu gym, and has authored a number of successful books. A good way to sum up the hero archetype of Jocko Willink is to be someone who takes extreme ownership; everything in your world, whether it seems like it at first or not, is your responsibility, not someone else’s. I honestly think about this all the time when something isn’t going right, or I want to blame someone else for some problem or nuisance. Maybe I get frustrated if the sink is full of dishes(if I do the dishes, this won’t be a problem anymore). Or maybe, someday if someone works for me and they do an unsatisfactory job at a particular task, I get frustrated and want to punish them(what if instead I think, “I obviously did a poor job explaining the job to this person, I will be more thorough next time,” or “I need to be more careful when I go through the hiring process to find a better fit for the job”). It may seem weird at first, but if you take responsibility for everything in your own life rather than trying to blame someone else, even if it seems justified, everything will work out better.
Alexander Hamilton: Along with many others, Ron Chernow’s excellent biography, Hamilton, as well as the Broadway play that it inspired, introduced me to the incredible human that was Alexander Hamilton. A soldier in the Revolutionary War, a statesman, and an incredibly prolific writer and speaker, Hamilton was instrumental in the formation of our earlier nation. While many time in history, people with strong ambitions in politics and government end up leaving a lot of destruction in their wake(I mentioned Napoleon and Alexander the Great earlier), Hamilton’s ambitions evidently were much more virtuous; he was determined to make the American government as durable and long lasting as possible, and on countless occasions was not afraid to stand up for what he believed to be right. On one occasion, at the Constitutional Convention, in a hot room during the mid summer with poor ventilation, he argued his case in an over six hour long speech, with no break for lunch. As Chernow put it in his book, “It was predictable that when the wordy Hamilton broke silence, he would do so at epic length”(231). From Hamilton, I learn to speak my mind for what I believe is right, and never stop reading, studying, and writing.
As Crenshaw writes, having these hero archetypes means that you try to take the best qualities of all of these people, and implement them into your own life to make your world better. However, it is understandable that many people may not know what they should focus their life on, and who in turn should be their hero archetypes. Therefore, I thought it would be appropriate to end with what Crenshaw calls the “American Ethos;” something that all of us, no matter our life goals or political differences, can live by, and from there, determine our heroes as we see fit. It goes like this:
“I will not quit in the face of danger or pain or self-doubt; I will not justify the easier path before me. I decide that all my actions, not just some, matter. Every small task is a contribution toward a higher purpose. Every day is undertaken with a sense of duty to be better than I was yesterday, even in the smallest ways. I seek out hardship. I do not run from pain but embrace it, because I derive strength from my suffering. I confront the inevitable trials of life with a smile. I plan to keep my head, to be still, when chaos overwhelms me. I will tell the story of my failures and hardships as a victor, not a victim. I will be grateful. Millions who have gone before me have suffered too much, fought too hard, and been blessed with far too little, for me to squander this life. So I won’t. My purpose will be to uphold and protect the spirit of our great republic, knowing that the values we hold dear can only be preserved by a strong people. I will do my part. I will live with Fortitude.”
I believe that anyone who believes and tries to live by these principles is a good example of a hero archetype.