behemot's cave AND crag (Photo credit: Ainunau)

I don’t think we ever outgrow our need for heroes, but our specifications for them change as we change.  Even when the day comes that we realize it’s our turn to be the heroes, even when perhaps somebody actually walks up to us and anoints us with the unsettling phrase, “You are my hero,” still we go on looking for what we can’t do without out, the image or the memory of or the meeting with that vivid person who lived or lives on the same earth that we do and whose example will be powerful enough to show us how to go on.  Often mysteriously, our heroes make themselves available to us just when we’re most in need of their particular gifts.  Suddenly, he’s just there or she’s just there. Our befitting shepherd that very one who can set us straight, who will graciously pause in the timelessness of his or her proper work, and take us by the shoulders and turn us around so that we, still so helplessly bound and beset by time, can see where our proper work leads next.

Gail Godwin

Question for the Day:

Do you have a mountain to climb in your life or writing that requires the guidance of a new hero?

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