Heroes Fall Sometimes

Our heroes fall sometimes. They stumble, the muddle, they get tired just like everyone else. Superman has kryptonite, Spider-Man went crazy with the symbiote suit, Achilles had his heel. There are weaknesses and flaws in all of us. The strongest of us.  But because we've placed them on a pedestal for whatever reason, it's exponentially more noticeable. And that can be the hardest thing to recognize and understand. But the most important lessons come from failure, and not always our own. We can't learn how to truly get back up unless we watch someone we respect do the same thing.

I've been thinking about this a lot. A large portion of this is a spiritual thing, and another part of it is deeply personal. But examples of mistakes, those are valuable lessons I'll never forget.

When I think about stumbles I've witnessed. Whether it was drugs, sex (infidelity or other issues), an injury, or fraud. There have been some stumbles that have caught my breath. I don't know where I first heard it, but the height of the fall is not as important as the getting back up again.

I've seen marriages fall apart due to someone's infidelity. In a couple of them it shook my confidence to the core about the individual involved. They were someone I respected. Someone who helped me learn how to man up. The fall was crushing to me. But I watched someone pick himself. Step up as a father. Rebuild his life. Move forward. Be that man I knew he was. I've watched that more than once now. And each time I'm in awe that someone who can lose essentially everything, can turn around and be there for other people. Can turn their life around.

I've seen the same thing with addiction. Varying degrees, varying devices have torn down more people than I can count. To see someone drop so low is always frightening and worrying. It eats at your soul. To know someone who has dropped so low that they've lost or came close to losing their life has impacted me all too often. I'm afraid it will continue to impact me. Over and over again. 

Looking at how hard some people struggle with mental illness, quietly, unknown, really truly struggling. It's the hardest thing to identify. More and more people have publicly or privately admitted struggles lately. It's been insane how many people I didn't know were hurting. I've written about that recently, but I can't stress it enough. If we looked around the room and could see the internal pain and scars, how would that change how we act? What differences would that make for all of us.

I've just been reflecting on humanity lately. How much we don't see in our fellow man. In our heroes, our idols. Too often we only see the success or the accomplishments. We don't see every step that was taken. It makes it all to easy to judge those we view as strong. To hold them to a standard we don't hold ourselves too. I'm so guilty of that. But as I understand our universal frailty, I'm changing how I look at myself.

I have a lot of developing, growing, and changing I have to do. I've got demons, I've got struggles. And I have the world, a beautiful wife, wonderful family, employment and education opportunities. But I still have struggled with addiction, with injury, with mental illness. My anxiety, my depression, has been a temper and unbridled anger too often. I've sabotaged myself. I still do. I can't place all of those trials in the past. They are still real. It's a battle some days. And I don't always win. Sometimes the darkness is a bit too much. And I lose.

I don't want to anymore. I want to be better. Watching people stand up, wrap up their wounds and head up the hill without looking back. It makes my heroes more human. Makes them more relate-able. But even more importantly it lets me know change is possible. Repentance is possible. Growth and hope are inherently part of the experience of falling down.

Hopefully I can be the example I've looked up to. In time at least.