Heroes and Villains

Heroes and Villains

John Paul Derryberry

As the ability to form our own echo chambers seemingly increases exponentially, we continue to lose a lot of perspective that spurs growth. You see, people, while often appearing to be simple creatures, in reality, are made up of a whole bunch of little interactions and big moments informing them how they should interact with the world and others. How our hearts were first broken, often times is the lens through which we view future relationships. Growth or shrinking is found in our ability to make sense of our interactions with others. We make heroes and villains of the people around us through these interactions, often times making ourselves and the people we agree with, the hero, and those we don't, the villain. 

It is a very scary way to interact with others and the world at large. You see, when heroes and villains have to do battle, then the fate of the world depends on who wins. While that makes for great movies and stories, in reality, it makes for a messy hurtful world. I should know. I spent a majority of my formative years viewing numerous people through the lens of, "either you are with me or against me". The people against me were anyone who disagreed with me and thus a villain that must be vanquished. It led to fights with people I care deeply about, ending relationships and, the ones that didn't end were altered into a constant state of anxiety. In my head, I was the hero righting wrongs, but in reality, a villain for causing so much pain to those around me. 

As we have made it easier to only interact with people we agree with, we have made it increasingly likely that we see so many others as villains. "They're evil and they must be stopped," we think. Yet through my journey of constantly telling myself to hold space for people I disagree with, I have found it's increasingly unlikely that I'm interacting with a villain. More than likely, I'm interacting with someone who has had life experiences that have put them in difficult choices, and they have chosen wrong a lot of the time. They are quite simply the folks hero's should save in the movies. Whether they are rich, poor, white, black, straight, gay, or somewhere in between, they are struggling to understand what happened to them and how to move through life with a bigger view than, "we have only two choices: right or wrong". When in reality, lots of us lack the knowledge to understand why people make the choices they do. 

The answer is in the details of how they were treated by important people in their lives, before they started interacting with you. That's ultimately who we are, and people able to process that are important. That growth comes from interactions with people we agree with, that we don't agree with, and asking the questions: what happened to make you think that way. No longer heroes and villains, but two people trying to impart some life wisdom to each other. Some of the best wisdom I have received is from people, whom most of you would view through the lens of heroes and villains, as big, bad villains. Most of the time people, all people, don't need to be defeated in battle, but understood. The world needs heroes, and villains, just not nearly as much as you think. We need compassionate and thoughtful people who understand that they have the capacity to be both, depending on how they let their strengths and weaknesses move through them.