Hard to Be a Hero

I agree quite strongly with Hemingway that age brings increasing difficulty in finding heroes, but that one still needs them. As skepticism increases, the number of people one can admire or hope to emulate decreases. An older person, having more experience and having acquired, one hopes, a more objective and realistic assessment of other people, tends to see more flaws than a younger person might. On the other hand, the older person is likely to recognize and value certain qualities such as careful reasoning, empathy, and kindness that a younger person might overlook or consider irrelevant. (Yet another problem is that a person's heroes tend to be older than herself and the number of possibilities dwindles, but that has to be accepted!)
Thus, I believe that men and women of all ages need heroes. As a woman, though I find that heroes-heroines, actually--are especially important because the role of a woman is constantly being redefined. Women today are frequently expected to not just to "have it all" but to do it all: maintain successful careers; develop and nurture the kind of relationships with others that they often value so higly; and, in many cases, contribute their financial and emotional resources to the raising of a family as well. Idolizing other women can be therapeutic, eye-opening and inspirational. One can see what remarkable women have done, how they've done i and what they have to say about it all.
For example, I have always admired Maya Angelou's ability to integrate her personal and her professional life. And Tomi Morrison, in works such as The Bluest Eye and Beloved, creates intelligent, honest fictional characters and provides a vast outpouring of thought-provoking and challenging ideas. The fact that both of these women are both female and black makes them the more admirable to me.
The older I get, the more important these "Hero' womean" become for me. Such people help one to keep on trying, both by exhortation and example. I like to think I...