Comments on: What is the Heroic Life?

By: Drew Jacob

Drew Jacob — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:32:26 +0000

Hi Ryan! Very good point. I don't think anyone should try to become a hero and I certainly don't have that as a goal myself. People often say I am on a quest to become a hero but that gets it wrong. I'm inspired by the great heroes and I seek only to live that example, to journey freely and seek challenge, and live for my ideals. As soon as someone decides they are a hero, they've pretty much given up being heroic. It's a receding point. In other words, it's emergent.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 12:50:59 +0000

Drew, thanks for this amazing and inspiritational blog. And Mescribe, thanks for your brilliant post. I completely agree: traveling is a state of mind, an embracing of spontaneity, a willingness to explore and love everyone and everything you meet: strangers on the street, in a cafe, in the park, street musicians, homeless people, even trees and flowers and cities.

I also think your post Mescribe helps demonstrate another point I want to try to make.

Drew, I wonder if the discussion you had with “C Luke Mula” points to a dark side in the metaphor of the hero. Everything has many sides, so this is nothing new. But I think if you take the metaphor of the hero so seriously that you think in order to become a hero, society must confer that status upon you, then I wonder if seeking heroism is in part another kind of status-seeking.

For me the operant metaphor is not becoming a hero but giving action to love. This is what I find in Mescribe’s vision of traveling: as a mindset of spontaneous love, which is given to all and which expects nothing in return. Isn’t the hero ultimately the one who gives his love not only to himself or to the special few he chooses, but to everyone, to society, to the world itself?

All this said, for me the positive side of the metaphor of the hero is that it emphasizes action even in the face of fear and pain and difficulty. Even love has a dark side, which I think is that it sometimes lacks aggression, forcefulness, pushing. But that sacred aggression is so beautifully captured in the idea of the hero undergoing pain and challenge and sacrifice.

All that is to say, I think a hero is someone who works hard to expand his or her boundaries in order to love ever more and varied peoples and things.

By: Drew Jacob

Drew Jacob — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:42:25 +0000

That’s a really cool strategy. Thanks for sharing it, Mescribe.

By: mescribe83

mescribe83 — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 13:37:56 +0000

Hi Grace,
This is my first time reading this blog, but I will likely continue doing so. I’d like to share a perspective from my own life on the topic of travelling.
I recently came to a realization in my own life, here in Oakland: if I pretend that I’m traveling, I will behave as if I am, and I have experiences as if I am. What is traveling, really, but taking oneself out of the day to day in order to have experiences that are otherwise impossible, or at least improbable.
When I’m traveling, I talk with people I would have ignored, I stop and breath in beautiful vistas I would have walked past, I hang out with the street musician in the metro station and she plays my favorite song.
All of these kinds of experiences can be had in your hometown, if only one holds onto the idea: pretend that you’re traveling.
My two cents.

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