Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Easter Sunday is soon upon us, the holiest day in the Christian year. Christians “celebrate” the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate expression of altruism in the “history” of mankind. Men and women are tasked with following Him as the ultimate role model for how we are to live our lives.

If one does, indeed, believe, and if one does follow Him as the role model in one’s life, then all other talk of role models is irrelevant. Like so many other goals and targets, though, the Lamb as role model is ultimately unachievable by any and all, and thus we have the all too human phenomenon of other, human role models.

What then constitutes a role model? Who is qualified to fill this role? Who would be willing to do so? How do we find these people, these role models?

In a world that was much less heterogenous, where people of all stripes had more in common than not and acknowledged that fact, role models seemed to be a little easier to come by. Audie Murphy. Stan Musial. Jackie Robinson. Heck, even a politician (Ike, JFK) or two filled the bill. Every town had a teacher or a coach or a cop who everyone looked up to. Why then and not now? Partly because of that sense that we were all more the same than less, but partly because we only knew the good stuff about our role models.

And on top of that we only really wanted to know the good stuff, ya know?

Once upon a time to be a role model meant to be always trying to do the right thing for the right person at the right time. In those days without social media we didn’t really know that much about anyone, heroes included, and we forgave the occasional slip because we saw the effort and appreciated the ongoing efforts. It inspired us to do better ourselves. We forgave the occasional failure because we knew how hard it is to always look to do that favor, to offer the helping hand, to put forth the best effort. Our sense of our own humanity was extended to our role models as a gift to them in the hope that they would continue to lead us.

The perceived lack of role models in society today says more about us than it does about any role models that we may have discarded. This is undoubtedly at least partly due to the afore mentioned social media. We accentuate our differences rather than our commonalities, no matter how far on either end of the curve those differences might lie. We not only accept too much information about our all too human potential role models, we actively seek the “smoking gun” that will bury them. We are all the lesser for all of that, for we deny ourselves the potential that could come from having a role model just a little bit better than ourselves. Someone to lead us to a better version of ourselves.

The only perfect role model to have walked the planet continues to set an unachievable goal, however noble might be our effort. And He has been dead for more than 2000 years.