Heroes

For those of you who read my post on Gossip as a result of going to see Russell Brand - this is the next instalment in posts inspired by the evening with Russ.

The tour he is doing is called The Messiah Complex and in a nutshell, (although it's a bit hard to distil down the premise of his 2 hour show into a nutshell,) he's basically got heroes in his life and has identified that although some of his heroes are flawed we can still learn a lot from them and be inspired.

He talked about our human need to be inspired by heroes because if you don't have a hero then there are multi-national brands that are seeking to fill that vacuum. There's a whole background to this premise but suffice it to say, it totally makes sense to me.

Russell's heroes are Gandhi, Che Guevara (I love him too and loved my trip to Cuba), Malcolm X and Jesus (I love him as well).

I agree that we need to have heroes in our lives. Heroes that inspire us to greatness and lead us forward in life with a vision for a better future. This may sound airy fairy but I believe that having a hero to look towards is almost as important to the human spirit as is air, food and water to the physical being.

Just imagine a world without any heroes. Without anyone brave, strong, inspirational, flawed but courageous. 

The football clubs know how important heroes are and spend a fortune building their brands around this. You only need to look at how many shirts are sold with football star names on. (Now this is where I come unstuck because the only really famous footballers I know of are Pele, Beckham and Zidane).

Russell left the audience at the end with a question - who are your heroes?

It's a good question. I'd like to ask every school child in the district who their heroes are and see what kind of responses they give.

My most abiding hero is my Oma. 

She was born in 1915, in a place called Saskatchewan which is on the prairies in Canada. Her early life resembled something very much like The Little House on the Prairie series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (made into a tv show too).

As a young woman from the wide open spaces of Canada, never having seen the sea, she crossed the Atlantic to arrive in London in the 1930's and then went to live in India as a WEC missionary. I can't even begin to imagine the adventures that she must have had but I know from talking to her that she loved India and to this day I've never tasted cooking as good as hers. She made the most amazing dhal, parathas and pumpkin pie. Check that out for Indian and Canadian cooking, eh. She survived extreme hardship, earthquakes, hunger, and raised 10 amazing children. I loved her with a passion and when I'm feeling low I think about what she would do next. To be honest she'd stay up all night reading like I do too. She'd get up early and work hard and she would still be ready to go and help people and give them her own meal rather than eat herself. She was also a person of incredible faith even in the midst of hardship.

My political hero is Fred W Jowett. 

 

You can check out a little more about him on here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_William_Jowett
He was a Bradford politician who started work in Bradford's mills age 8 and ended up being in the very first Labour Government as a Cabinet minister. 


Other heroes come and go for me. I guess it depends on the time, place and situation. I'm just trying to think of who my modern day living heroes are and to be honest I think it's a case of watch this space. 

Who are your heroes?