DO OUR ‘HEROES’ HAVE THE MORAL FIBRE?

DO OUR ‘HEROES’ HAVE THE MORAL FIBRE?

'Hero' is a person who is admired for courage,outstanding achievement or noble quality! In mythology, it is a person of superhuman strength and semi divine origin.

Hero also is a champion, great man, man of the hour, conquerer in war, a man of great physique!

Hero may be found in a book, story, play, history or film with good qualities.

WHAT WE TELL OUR CHILDREN:

We teach our children to be like some hero, when they grow up. After we grow, we long to be that hero! This is natural. All of us do this all the time!

It is only the concept of hero worship that I question.  I do not wish to upset people by dropping names of some of the heroes! Our concept of hero or role model may be like some particular superstar in Tamil or Hindi movies. Or to be rich and live luxuriously like the Ambanis. We may dream of our kids to become the most famous politicians of the country (whoever they may be).

There is no doubt that we wish our children to have great qualities such as punctuality, honesty, integrity, valour, leadership, great courage, magnanimity in victory, grace in defeat, curtsy, patience, tolerance, politeness, good health!

We keep telling our children to be like the first ranker in class while we ourselves as adults dream of achieving the status of some of our own heroes.

THE TRUTH:

But I am certain that the people we allude these characteristics to, may be totally be lacking in some, if not many of these qualities.

For instance, people with political nexus may accumulate surplus money, influence and acquire popularity in no time, set up large factories, multiple businesses or health industries!  We know the kind of ‘wheeling and dealing’ that goes on to achieve these ends!

Recently a couple of famous, young cricketers were dropped from the national team for want of decency about women. Remember, they were ‘heroes’ till 5 days ago! I have no doubt that they will get back to their ratings given time. 

We have had a sample ‘sneak shot’ of our real heroes in this instance in real life! Heroes in real life seldom expose their weakness in public!!

FAULTY SHIFT IN FOCUS:

Would you like your child to achieve greatness, but lose his moral fibre as he ascends up in life?

We have always retained the knack of teaching our children great qualities , but have wrongly shifted the focus to follow heroes who are presumed to have these qualities. 

Despite good parenthood,  the children may have also got mixed signals from films, television channels about the rich and famous! So they tend to look upto ‘actual real heroes’ rather than ‘hypothetical heroes’ with such qualities.

‘If my hero can cheat, smoke, womanise, kill, why not me’ would be the logic of such a child! This  leads to crime not only in adulthood but also in the teens!

RESULTANT SCENERIO:

Such a behaviour results in

• lying,
• stealing,
• copying in exams for better marks,
• cheating in real life to win at any cost,
• poor choice of friends,
• disrespect to parents ,law and property
• alcoholism,
• drinking,
• cruelty,(in beating up the father for film money to see your hero in the silver screen at the first show, the first day!) 
• in writing unprintable responses in social media on items of politics, events, occurrences, 
• in poor quality debates almost every night on television - with crass, gross, loud, argumentative, abusive language, ( when they grow up !)
• in murders for revenge on opinions of people with contrary belief to our own!

It is time for us to turn away from reel personalities for qualities to fairy tales personalities with ideal qualities! Let us continue to teach our kids great qualities of life, but keep the ‘real heroes’ at bay!

IN SUMMARY:

In general,

• don’t compare your child to other children in class or school!
• don’t dream want to be like someone in real life!
• instead, teach them to long for the qualities in such a hero-person !
• teach them every hero has a good side and mediocre side! Just follow the good side!
• don’t put heroes on too high a pedestal!
• higher they stand, greater the heroes fall!
• be aware that an ordinary citizen may become a hero with an extraordinary action!
• lead  your life with satisfaction, you are better than many!
• set an example with your own life! &
• spend more time with family so that children get the flavour of how to behave!

And last of all, it is high time that our dictionaries and story books stopped referring to the hero as ’man’! The ladies are equally good (or bad)!