HERO

“I write to understand as much as to be understood” - Elie Wiesel (1928-2016). I think most are familiar with Wiesel and his story; a Jewish, Romanian teenager survives Nazi death camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald to become a great scholar and humanitarian. The written record serves posterity but the act of framing the language and getting it down, it archives that story in the writer’s understanding. I think that’s what Wiesel meant with “I write to understand. . .” and his story never lost its way. 

I identify as a writer, not that I’m accomplished but the mere fact that I frame language and get it down. That process, just doing it, it etches meaning onto my own understanding. So the connection with my hero is made real in his quote, “I write to understand . . .” Always in need of a metaphor: standing in a downpour, under a big umbrella so you only get wet from the knees down. But to live the story and to own that story, you need to be soaked from head to toe. Words are clear enough but visuals and feelings are in there too, somewhere between the lines. 

Elie Wiesel is one of my heroes, and in my experience the whole idea of heroes gives way to imagery of the tide’s ebb and flow rather than caricatures on pedestals. Being one of my heroes depends largely on me and my process so their ebb and flow is to be expected. Some days it’s Mark Twain with his razor edge sense of secular morality and other days it is Kurt Vonnegut’s rejection of national narcissism. MLK Jr. is a hero for his Christ like sense of duty, knowing they would kill him and other times it is secular humanist Jane Addams rising with the tide. I love them all and of them all, none jog my conscience more often than Ellie Wiesel. Who had more cause to hate and take revenge than Elie Wiesel? But he lived a life that spoke of reconciliation, awarded the Noble Peace Prize in 1986. His heroics were parceled out consistently over a lifetime, in the best interests of oppressed people he had never met. So it’s not just about our connection as writers but also about both humanity and inhumanity and which side of that line you want to place your feet. 

I do not idolize or exalt sports stars, not for stardom and certainly not for the sake of sport. Neither do I glorify celebrities who use that status to advance an ideology. I never cared much for John Wayne. He was cast in heroic roles where he could simply be himself and he rode that character into legend. When he used that leverage to advance conservative politics it validated my apathy there in. Even though I understood and agreed in principle, in my view, Jane Fonda was no better.

Leaders in government have an incredibly difficult row to hoe. Some come to it with heads and hearts in the right place but politics is blood sport. At the onset, winning elections is the means to a noble end but in the end, those means become the new end. When public service morphs into a career, slide of hand with smoke and mirrors seems unavoidable. I don’t think here are any heroes in government, just performers with personal agendas. With both sorrow and conviction I concede to the axiom, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” As appealing as the opportunity is, no need to beat up on the President. He is the product of his environment and he can’t help himself. The great flaw in the democratic process is that a vulnerable electorate can and often does elect terrible leaders, even demagogues. I’m afraid everything he does is purposed to increase the value of his brand and, like Saddam Hussein, he wants to be President for life. I think the public at large is turning to human nature’s darker side, believing his self righteous hyperbole. The appeal of crushing your enemies is too much to resist. You don’t have to move your feet, just let inertia do the work. If it hadn’t been DT it would have been some other wannabe god. 

I tend to be a harsh critic of human kind but sometimes a personality surfaces with a breath of fresh air. When that happens I take courage, hope for something I can take to heart, take to the bank, make my own. Today, Eli Wiesel’s, “I write to understand. . .” Tomorrow, Helen Keller, Mother Theresa or Nelson Mandela; who knows, maybe George Carlin.