by: Phyllis Hampton
December 20, 2009
What is the hero’s greatest tool? It is objectivity.
Perhaps you might instead have guessed the answer was compassion, caring, righteous anger, or some other propelling state of heart or mind. These conditions are necessary in order to initiate into the action step of a hero’s journey, but they are not tools. You cannot learn or purchase caring or a passion to want to make life better for others. You somehow have to arrive at this point in your destiny, and deep compassion and caring define this point.
My personal thought is that there are many heroes among us, but most have no idea how to proceed in order to be successful. Instead of these individuals becoming heroes that facilitate growth and expansion, there are a lot of frustrated righteous martyrs out there, and humanity misses out on their message, their compassionate acts, their knowledge, and their wisdom.
So how does a hero go about making use of his/her FIRE, or the superhuman power that compassion and caring offer, in order to fulfill a heroic humanitarian role? Developing objectivity can help. Often would-be heroes have preconceived notions about what is “right,” or how knowledge, wisdom or a heroic act should be received by others. It is important to consider that being passionate or intelligent does not automatically make one “right,” and assuming so can easily create a fiasco. This energetic equation looks like this:
FIRE (compassionate energetic power) + unchallenged subjective beliefs = debacle.
If the hero-type blames the outer world for the failure, then the hero quickly becomes martyr-like and usually goes down with his cause. Radical activists rarely have the impact they seek. Heroism and martyrdom (lower case) are not the same things. With objectivity in the equation, it instead looks like this:
FIRE (Compassionate energetic power) + wise objectivity = steady gain.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Are you a hero that can entertain the thought that your reasoning or your beliefs and assumptions may be in error or in need of refining?
- Can you be flexible in your expectations?
- Do you realize that change cannot be forced and it often takes time? And to be an agent of change does not necessarily mean you do it alone?
- Are you willing to listen, observe and make adjustments until the greatest growth and expansion is realized?
We are in desperate need of true heroes! Objectivity can assist those who have the potential to reach the apex of the hero’s journey and offer humanity a little more freedom and lessen its stagnation.