Be Your Own Hero
Growing up I always wanted a hero — someone to look up to, someone to idolize, someone to depend upon when things got rough. What I failed to realize is that I was always looking in the wrong places. My hero wasn’t outside or external. It wasn’t a fictional character, an actress, a politician, or a relative. It was me. All along, I was my own hero — without ever realizing it.
Let me get you in on a little life hack/pro tip, as you may like to call it. Life’s a game, a cruel one at times too. But we’re the masters of this game if we embrace one little truth. We are all our own heroes. We are all we’ll ever need to succeed, to be happy, and to feel fulfilled. We were born alone and naked, and that’s how we’ll die too. So the sooner we accept this universal truth, the better off we’ll all be.
There’s nothing sad or pessimistic about this. It is what it is. We form relationships because we’re inherently social animals but we forget that our first and foremost relationship is with ourselves. We are our own anchors. And losing sight of this complicates things and causes problems — this is where we lose faith in ourselves and make life a living hell for ourselves. Self-love isn’t easy. It’s raw, ugly, and real. But it’s pertinent. Because without it, we are nothing and we are no one. We are not capable of true love if we don’t love our own damn selves first.
As long as I was looking for a hero on the outside, I was losing sight of what lay on the inside. The hero inside me was yearning to be heard and I continued ignoring her and shutting her down. Finally, she gave up in defeat and my self-loathe had no bounds. This didn’t just make me your typical emo teenager with angst and low self-esteem, it also made me unbearable and ignorant. I’m not talking about insecurities here. That’s a topic for another day. I’m talking self-hatred for petty reasons that didn’t hold stead in my life then and don’t hold any now. The only people who should hate their own selves are bullies, misogynists, homophobes, Nazis, supremacists, murderers, rapists and criminals — anyone who has actually done hateful things. But the irony remains in the fact that these people actually feel a lot more highly about themselves than someone who probably performs good deeds for a living. The reason behind this probably lies in the fact that their confidence is what makes them do these unmentionable things with no remorse. It’s not like there’s no hope for them. They can help themselves. They can mend their ways, educate themselves and really do good for society — if they wish to. My point is — they are their own hero. And we ought to be too.
A hero is anyone who is strong, kind, and true at heart. We are all heroes deep down. We are all capable of great things if we just looked deep and really believed.
You have to wake up every day and remind yourself of how badass you are. You have to remind yourself that you’re worthy of all the love and success in the world. You have to remind yourself that you are capable of so much, and you will achieve all your goals and dreams if you just work towards them and believe in yourself. You have to affirm yourself.
We all make mistakes. But we all must remember that if we don’t make mistakes then we’ll never realise what our strengths and weaknesses are. We have to make mistakes in order to progress. It’s just the way the world works. If we don’t fall, we won’t get up.
Heroes are not perfect because heroes are humans.
“All monsters are human.” is a quote from American Horror Story. It holds true in every sense because monsters are human and humans are monsters, then they are heroes too. We’re all in this mess of a world just trying to find our way. We’re all our own heroes.
So go ahead, my friend, and be your own hero.
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