02.22.26
I’m not noble. I know that now.
When I was a kid watching stories or reading stories, I remember thinking that doing the noble thing in any given scenario was so gobsmackingly obvious. I never understood why a protagonist would do something stupid-selfish or hesitatingly cower for a second or two. Kid me would get so frustrated so fast. But now, since the disillusionment that is growing up, I know better. Doing the noble thing is spectacularly difficult. And I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely confident of a single time in my life when I’ve done it.
….Mm… but give me a moment, and I’m sure that I can think of the last time I’ve witnessed it……
Hm. Yes.
Noble individuals do exist in my life. But they look nothing like the movies. Their heroism is less cool—sorry, A LOT LESS COOL—than the story kind. Their heroism, though, is also a lot harder…. I might not have the warrant to say this, but something seems easier about going off on a wildin’, out-of-this-world, super important adventure than taking up the real-life and utterly drab and unnoticed chores that nobody prefers to do but somebody’s always gotta do to keep society from falling apart or to keep the family from starving or to keep the room from getting dusty and moldy or to do all of the above, really, and then some. And it’s for this reason—the fact that insipid but oh-so-real heroism seems so much harder for a human being to maintain than story-heroism seems for some lucky character to jump into—that the nobility of these individuals in my life seems so much nobler than the nobility of the characters of even my most favorite franchises. As cheesy as it sounds, these days you’ll find me quicker and gladder to call these unsung boring folk “heroes” than any glitzy swagger fantasy characters out there.
And I love these folk. I try to remember that my life would be in shambles without them, that these individuals deserve my gratitude in practice and not only in thought, and that their example I should always strive to emulate. Put another way, I don’t want to end up a musing couch potato who freeloads off of the mundane work of others. True appreciation of such people in my life wouldn’t stay some journaled thought bubble; it’d manifest itself as trying my best to do my own little mundane part in the wheel of things. I actually think that it’d be hateful of me to let these individuals’ work feed someone who’s just a spoiled loafer. It’d be loving of me to have their work support someone who hasn’t given up on trying to learn how to maintain their own tedious labors—my own drab chores that might one day bolster these individuals and others like their work bolsters me.
The day that I can see and feel this will be the day that I can be confident that I’ve done at least one kind of noble thing. I’ve just now decided.
