Cracked Pot Meditations – Heroes

Meditation for January 28th

Heroes

We all look up to somebody and think of them as our hero. Boys look up to athletes, professional athletes, and even the local construction worker, while girls look up to Roseanne Barr, Margaret Cho, and Chelsea Handler as their icons. We need people to try to emulate. This is why religion has its saints, prophets, and exemplars who embody the pure life despite deadly struggles. Buddha used to be a total rich bro before ditching his top knot and going homeless. Jesus was given some pretty choice temptations before deciding to die a horrible, meaningless death instead.

Well stop. All the people you look up to are horrible. They are perverted, jerk face weirdoes who are getting away with things your simple little pure mind can’t even imagine. This is why they are at the top of their fields: because they are so sick and twisted, they can come up with creative, original work.

Does that take away from the work if they couldn’t keep their hands to themselves? Take a breath and think: if this were your neighbor instead of David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, Chuck Berry, Drake, Roman Polanski, or Chris Brown, would you still visit their business? Would you go over and BBQ with them? People have stopped doing business with a company for far less than these people, yet they still bow down to it at their temples and forgive it for its unspeakable acts.

Gandhi hated black people, Martin Luther King Jr. cheated on his wife, and the Dalai Lama is running a fundraising scheme worse than Scientology and working for the CIA. Your heroes all have skeletons in and out of their closets.

Maybe you’ll say, I love this famous person, and they are a saint. They just haven’t been caught.

Be your own hero and stop worshipping famous people.

Prayer

The God of the Desert,

make me a hero,

let me resist all temptation,

but still be able to do incredible things.

Let me paint beautiful paintings without the need for underage sex.

Let me write the great American novel without kidnapping and torturing anyone.

Let me compose pop music to dance to without needing to kill any hookers.

Let me sing like an angel without peeing on anybody’s child.

Amen.

Craft

Go to an 80s night theme dance club or party and try not to dance to any artist or artists who committed atrocities on others. Even if the person was never found guilty, they were able to use the partnership of that music to fund the settlements and still keep the monkey and the giraffe. Try to dance only to people who were never caught or even suspected of being a dirtbag. Bonus if you are dressed like an 80s icon who kept themselves clean.

Goal

Be careful of the people you look up to. Power, fame, and money have done horrible things to people’s heads. It’s okay to like someone who’s not moral, but remember that what they may have done has hurt people.

This is like trying to enjoy only a conflict-free culture. Some of the most famous people have had their sins swept under the rug by the media because their work is so essential, nd people don’t like knowing something beautiful has an ugly side, but it usually does.

Stop worshipping people.