When my son Silas was still at primary school, he was constantly told to ‘be the best he could be’. It drove him nuts. Sometimes, we just need to be what we are. And anyway, being the best we can be doesn’t always feel like enough, especially when we catch a glimpse of our heroes.
We’ve seen a lot of heroes lately: the kind who win Olympic medals, the kind who seem effortlessly able to achieve things we can only dream about.
Of course there’s nothing effortless about it, but there is something magical about heroes and we go to great lengths to try to meet them, hoping that some of the magic might rub off.
A few months ago, I met Paula Radcliffe and Steve Cram here in this very studio. I was in awe. But of course there wasn’t time to study them, learn anything, or to ask their advice. No, I just embarrassed myself by stumblingly asking for their autographs.
Now, if my shambling performance was anything to go by, perhaps the old saying that you should never meet your heroes is right. It’s not that I was disappointed – just that I had no idea what to do.
Christians believe that knowing their hero – Jesus himself – is at the very centre of their faith. But it’s not knowledge that comes from any conventional kind of meeting. Jesus himself was dubious about the need for those.
When his friend Thomas, who refused to believe he’d risen from the dead, was finally confronted by his hero, very much alive, Jesus said to him, ‘You believed because you saw me – blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believed’.
The thing is, what our heroes give us isn’t magically passed on by meeting them. It comes from learning from them, from what they’ve achieved, and maybe trying to follow their example.
That’s not to say I think it does us any harm to meet our heroes. After all, Laura Trott met Bradley Wiggins when she was 12, and look what she’s gone on to achieve. I just reckon we don’t need to.
Because what matters is not whether we get to shake hands with our hero but whether our hero inspires us and changes us. I’m sorry for Silas if this still drives him nuts, but what really matters is that our heroes make us want to try to be the best that we can be.
I kept this script, with Paula Radcliffe and Steve Cram’s signatures. They were, for the record, very nice.