There’s a fatal flaw to being a Hero.

This is something that I’ve struggled a lot with, actually. It’s one of those things that comes up whether you want to recognize it or not. If someone is hell-bent on being a hero, it’s pretty much certain that they’ll run into this problem eventually. It’s something you just have to confront, and to be honest, there’s really no easy answer for it:

Isn’t it kind of selfish to want to be a hero?

That’s something I think about more often than I’d like to admit. Again, it kind of comes with the territory, but it’s not exactly fun when every time you try to do something nice for someone you’re suddenly struck by thoughts like ‘wow, am I actually a huge ass hole?’ Because wanting to do good things kind of defeats the purpose of doing good things, doesn’t it?

You can’t do a good deed just for the sake of it if you’re actively out to do good deeds, right?

Let me elaborate: let’s say you want to be a hero: swooping in, rescuing princesses, saving the world, helping people. That’s all good, right? On the surface, there’s absolutely no problem with any of that. But the surface level is where that dies: where it absolutely falls apart. It’s like a thin veneer on a cheap piece of furniture—it looks great if you glance at it, but if you stare at it and pick it apart, it doesn’t take long to realize its total garbage.

If you want to be a hero, then that also means you want to go around doing things that make you a hero. That means you want to find people in trouble so you can help them. Not only does that mean, at least in some small part, that you rejoice when someone is in trouble—because it’s a chance for you to go be all heroic and righteous—but it means you want to be the person that helps them. It’s not good enough if they get saved on their own, or rescued without your help: if it’s not specifically you that rescues them, then while it might be good, you didn’t get to be heroic: it was a mark against you.

If we take that to the extreme, you might even arrive at some really messed up conclusion like ‘it would be better if people were in trouble so I could help them, because then I’d get to be a hero’. That’s a pretty terrible mindset.

Which really puts a spotlight on the particular conundrum: is wanting to be a hero actually a dick move? Rather, does the desire to do good nullify the action of actually performing good? If someone wants to be a hero, does the mere act of wanting disqualify them morally from ever being one? If you want to be good, can you ever really be good?

Some folks might answer in a snap: ‘yes, totally. Wanting to help people makes you a good guy.’ But that’s skin deep. We can all think of at least one person who might be doing good things but is secretly getting off on all the attention, praise, and accolades. I don’t think that makes you a hero. Sure, helping people is good, but I’m a huge proponent that intention is the biggest factor in establishing whether someone is good or bad. Help as many orphans and puppies as you want; if you’re doing it just to bang the busty blonde clerk at the adoption desk, you’re not a damn hero.

And that’s kind of where I’m at.

Not the ‘wanting to bang a busty blonde clerk’ part, just the…

…damnit.

Am I less of a good guy because I’m doing it for a few selfish reasons? Am I less of a Hero because I want to be one? Can I ever be a hero if a hero is what I want to be? And if we take it further, is there really any such thing as an act of selflessness?

I know that seems like a silly sort of question. It’s nice to be nice: it’s good to do good things. If you really want too, you can leave it there.

But I don’t.

I don’t want to leave it there, because I want to be a Hero. I really, desperately, want to make a positive impact in people’s lives. And not just a few dozen people—hundreds, thousands of people.

I want to do some good in this world.

All my life I’ve wanted to join Avatoan. There’s a lot of selfish motivation wrapped up in that: for one, it means I’m a prideful enough sonnova’ bitch to think I’m someone who’s even capable of helping people, even when I don’t have my own life sorted out. I mean, that’s pretty messed up when you think about it. It’s nothing but raw ego: how can you even think about helping other people straighten out when you don’t even have your own life together? Second, even wanting to make a difference, or wanting to be a positive part of the world, is just code for ‘I want people to notice me and like the stuff I do: like me’. That’s about as selfish as it gets.

If you want to be a hero and you help someone, you didn’t exactly commit a selfless act—quite the opposite. You acted in a way that cemented your own perception of yourself. You helped yourself. Maybe you wanted to feel good, or to be the reason someone else felt good. Maybe you wanted to implant yourself in someone else’s memory. If you’re a real weasel, you might even have done it just to prove to yourself that you’re a good person. And that’s kind of…

…disgusting. If you do that, you’re not a hero, you’re just an ass hole. Intent always plays a part.

…which, I guess, brings things back to me.

Of course it does. It’s always about me, right? Because I’m selfish. Because I want to be a Hero.

If I want to help someone, and I do, am I just satisfying my own ego? Is it actually possible to perform an act of kindness without some sort of ulterior motive?

That’s the question I’m asking myself.

Or, rather, that’s a question I once asked the universe. Because I needed an answer. I needed to know what I’m made of, if I just want to be a hero because I want to feel good or important, or if I really, truly wanted to just help people. I asked because I needed to know, at my core, if I was someone worth being a hero—someone who could really do it.

It’s a hard thing to go through with, asking a question like that: because the answer can always be ‘no’. You can’t know if, once the polish comes off, you’re really the type of person you think you are. The odds that you’re way more useless than you think are extremely high.

So…

With all of that said.

I asked the universe.

“Could someone like me ever be a hero?”

…and it answered. In a really simple, unassuming way.

 

One night, with iron clouds spilling rain over the bay—with waves crashing against the cove by the inn, and boats heaving up with the swell of the sea…

…I rushed out into the storm to bring Rhiley something.

I forget why I was out of the inn in the first place. Thunderstorms aren’t exactly uncommon in Andorhall, but they’re not the sorts of things you go play in. People board up their windows, the elves usually put up some kind of translucent barrier around their half of the city. If you’re closer down the cliffside to the bay, you bar up the beaches with sand bags and hope the water doesn’t flood your home.

It’s not the kind of weather to be out in is what I’m saying.

But she’d asked me to grab her something she’d forgotten, and me, being me, said sure.

Then the rain started its deluge. Just as I stepped out, it started to come down.

Being prepared for this—or maybe it was even the thing I was picking up, I can’t really remember—I had an umbrella. Without much thought I held it overhead, pulling up my boots and beginning to stomp through puddles on my way back home.

That’s when I saw it.

Well, that’s when I saw her, I guess.

A woman stood by herself beneath a tall stone archway.

All dressed up in stockings and a frilly dress, clearly a servant to some lord or other, the woman stepped out with no protection into the storm. She lifted a small notebook over her head, trying in some pathetic way to stop her hair from getting drenched.

Right in front of me. Not ten paces ahead.

I’ll never forget the series of thoughts that went through my head in that moment: because there weren’t any. I just ran up and moved my umbrella over her.

It wasn’t exactly a conscious action. It wasn’t something I reacted to, or decided to do. In that moment, watching that woman step out into the rain, I just did something. It’s not like the rain would have killed her. This wasn’t exactly a life or death situation. It’s hardly a time someone could say ‘oh wow, how heroic.’

But in that moment, when I saw someone whose life could be made just a little bit easier…

…I acted.

I jogged forward a few paces and put my umbrella over her. That was it. I remember she looked at me and smiled. I don’t think she spoke hestian, because she only got it out in broken words.

“You are a nice person,” she said to me.

That…

…felt really good.

 

It’s kind of a weird situation, wondering if you’re a selfish ass hole or not. Especially when, admittedly, a good portion of your life is centered on yourself and who you want to be. Wanting to be a hero, wanting to do good, inevitably means that you want it, which is selfish. How can you ever perform a selfless act if you gain satisfaction from doing it? It can be a pretty hard thing to reconcile.

But if I had to say what I was thinking, even though I said my mind was blank—if I imagine, really try to focus, I can catch just a glimpse of my motivation. Of the reason why I did it.

“That girl could use some help.”

That’s probably the closest thing to what I thought back then. Not ‘I could help her’, or ‘Oh, a chance to do good.”

Just “I can make that a little easier.”

I’m proud of the person who did that. I think that’s okay. Enough time has passed since then that I think its okay. Because by the end of that night, after I brought Rhiley her whatever and looked out at the thunderstorm, I had an answer to my question.

The reason I want to be a hero, the reason I want to do good—I don’t think you can ever remove it totally from selfishness. There’s always the want to be known, to be loved, to be appreciated—it would be irresponsible to say those things don’t play a part. I can’t lie and say there’s not a part of me that wouldn’t be absolutely thrilled to be famous and loved for my heroics.

But on that night with the storm, when a lady risked nothing more than getting a little wet and showing up for work a bit disheveled…

…I was able to help, just a little. And it wasn’t because I wanted to, or because I thought it was the right thing to do.

It was just what I did.

It happened to me.

I moved.

And I’m glad that the person who did that was me.