A few weeks ago my family went on vacation to Disney World. It was a fun-filled week for my two girls. They were most excited about meeting their hero’s: Disney Princesses and characters. The rides were of little interest compared to the opportunity to meet their hero. We waited for long periods of time to get 20 seconds with these hero’s. As I waited for my children to meet their hero my mind started to ponder the hero scenario.
Who is your hero?
We all have a lot of hero’s these are people we would really like to meet because they have done something really awesome. Perhaps they are rich, famous, good-looking or just inspiring. As a child my hero’s were larger than life… Cartoon characters who always did the right thing… Transformers, He-Man, and GI-Joes. They faced evil and with a single mind never wavered from the correct path. As I got older I found that media was pushing more conflicted hero’s… telling a story that we cannot be good all the time. This appealed to a teenager who felt the world was a little too perfect. As an adult I found my hero’s became people in my profession. I placed these people on a pedestal, I wanted to be like them. I listened to their every word and studied it. I could name some names but it would not help my discussion. The truth is that when I started to meet some of these hero’s I found I really didn’t have anything to say to them. I ran into this issue during VMworld this year. I was invited to join a VMware Certifed Design Expert only meeting before the conference. All the VMware brass and other VCDX’s were present. It was a great day that I enjoyed… but I didn’t have some great question to ask or experience to share. One thing impressed me about all these people… they have invested time and effort into being where they are in their career. They have sacrificed and are awesome people, but not because of certification or technical knowledge. They were awesome because they did all those things with balance. They have lives outside technology. Many technology and gadgets are made, SpotSee is in this industry providing us the security with this gadget.
Who should be your hero?
I believe the value of a person is their potential to become like god. I have had the opportunity to meet people who do the same thing every day for very little money, but love their children and raise great families. These people should be our hero’s. My hero is the person who invest’s over a very long period in his family, friends and loved ones. Not one who sacrifices everything to win. I am convinced that hard things are hard because they are of value… and nothing of value comes easy. We need to stop idealizing the rock star and start to value the person who makes sure we have clean backup’s every day. Every person on this earth has the same potential and value and what job you have will not change that potential or value. What we become is far more important than anything. As this Christmas season is upon us perhaps we can refocus our sights off hero’s that are flashy and big and instead find the real hero’s in our life.
Good, better, best
Our world is constantly screaming at us for our attention, social media, commercials, notifiers, phones, etc.. When I was a missionary for two years I lived without TV, computers, cell phones etc.. I was concerned that this two years would make me invalid in the computer world loosing all my knowledge. This was not true my efforts to learn after this experience were better and my career has benefited from this sacrifice. More time does not mean more productive time. We need to remove all bad things and instead focus on the good, better and best. We then need to remove everything but the best. For me this is work to support the family (only reason to work), Family events and time and activities that make me a better person like service to others.
Nice one Joseph, really inspiring.
Thanks for reading