Stories and our Heroes
As a little kid I was:
Odysseus in the Iliad and Odyssey
I was Hanuman in the Ramayana
I was Bheema (Arjuna's older big bro) in the Mahabharata
I was an Apostle of Christ in the Greatest Story Ever Told
I was William Wallace of Scotland
I was Han Solo in Star Wars
I was Spock in Star Trek
I was Maverick in Top Gun
I was Mr. Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
I was Jack Ryan, the incessant patriot and Indy Jones too
I read Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Desmond Bagley, Alistair McLean, Jack Higgins, Robert Ludlum, Ian Fleming, Ken Follet, Jeffrey Archer.
In the same day, I would go from reading a TinTin comic to attending Moral Science at my Jesuit School to watching a TV show about Buddha’s life.
Then came Star Wars and my main takeaway from my first time watching it in 1978 was The Force; all else came second.
Many years later:
Dances with Wolves I can say without any pretense, changed my life in terms of complete and total comfort and obsession with The Code of the West.
Dan Fogelberg through his songs made me absorb the Southwest.
The Last Samurai sealed my complete immersion in the Hero’s Story.
Tibet and Texas live in parallel in my big head.
To date, in my consciousness I am:
Texas Ranger Walker, Kicking Bird, John Dunbar, A Tibetan Lama, Maverick, Jimmy Johnson, Troy Aikman, Dan Fogelberg, Wyatt Earp, Katsumoto, Jonathan Winters and who knows how many more….
My all-time favorite ending line in a movie is at the end of The Last Samurai by the English Narrator as Tom Cruise returns to the Japanese Village of Katsumoto where Koyuki and others see him from afar:
"Nations, like men, it is sometimes said, have their own destiny. As for the American Captain, no one knows what became of him. Some say that he died of his wounds. Others, that he returned to his own country. But I like to think he may have at last found some small measure of peace, that we all seek, and few of us ever find".
Stories and our Heroes make a difference. We are them.
Be Mindful.