Failing Heroes

We all grow up with our own heroes.  Hero: a person we always wanted to become.  As kids, we have always looked up to our parents.  Boys wanted to be big and strong like their dads and girls wanted to be beautiful and loving like their moms.  Boys wanted to be like Superman or Wolverine. Girls dreamed of being Barbie or the Pink Ranger.  We all wanted to become like our heroes.  What happens then if the heroes that we look up to fail?

The first hero (or should I say heroine) I looked up to was Maningning Miclat.  You probably never heard of her.  But I did.  She was an artist, a painter and a trilingual poet.  I have always written poetry even as a kid.  But it was my discovery of Maningning's work (as well as Robert Frost and Edgar Allan Poe) that influenced me to take poetry writing seriously.  I was in highschool then, with all my raging hormones to compel me with burning passion to write about life and love begotten or unrequited, it didn't matter.  I wrote with a passion the way Maningning did on hers.  I so adored her I would sneak into National Bookstore during the weekend to read parts of her Voice from the Underworld book.  It broke my heart, then, when I learned she leapt to her death from a campus building.  My heroine was gone. My heart was broken. 

I was, too, a strong environmentalist as a child, hence my vast knowledge of nature stuff and my profound love for nature documentaries.  I would rather watch a nature documentary than watch a film on TV for that matter.  But my nature-freak nature doesn't end there.  Until now I am never comfortable throwing anything not into a garbage can.  I rather bring a candy wrapper home and throw it properly into the trashcan than just flip it conveniently into the streets. And so when I learned that actress Chin Chin Gutierrez was a strong environmental  activist, I fell head over heels for her.  She is also unbelievably beautiful and ageless.  She became my other heroine, even more so when she grazed the cover of Time magazine in 2003 as an Asian hero for the environment.  My heroine though, is fighting a losing battle.  In my beautiful country, the Philippines, poverty and overpopulation is pushing Mother Nature on her back.  By the end of the 21st century, if people and our leaders will not act soon, the country will be but and empty shell of of bare rocks, our people starved to death and ravaged by war and hunger.

For the last nine years, the hero that I looked up to is Lebron James, the basketball superstar.  I watched the NBA again because of him.  I looked up to LBJ because he is everything I wanted to become in my next life:  Big, strong, athletic, unbelievably wealthy.  He is of the same age as I am, a month younger than me.  And I've always cheered him on despite all the controversies surrounding him.  I wanted him to win a ring so bad to shut all the haters up and have his place in history as one of the best players to ever grace the basketball floor.  It is his ninth season already, and he is almost 28 years old.  Not as young anymore. Still no rings.  It seems like he remains a promise, a promise that is about to be blown out again this year in the playoffs.  I am writing this entry while watching their game.  I hope they win.  I don't want another hero in my life to fail.  Not now.  Not again.