Hopes, Heroes, and Changes

The title surely reminds me of an essay topic for GCE O'level English. Well, this piece is not meant to be a structured writing nor a narrative about a hero that rises in the midst of a hope-deprived society to defeat all forms of malice and evil. While the latter is very much desired, we know that they hardly exist in reality, and that simply is the harsh reality of life. Over and over again, the media would over publicise someone, be it politicians, sportsmen, or someone who survived childhood cancer, and stories of this sort sell like a hot cake. Perhaps this implies that our society has grown desperate of a change, one that will alter completely the lives of many who are oppressed and underprivileged.

I did not think much of this until recently the online media and public opinions in Jakarta are very much centered around the upcoming Governor election. Indeed, several videos and heartwarming stories have been circulated in the Internet, trying to win people's vote as well as directing sympathy towards a new pair of candidates challenging the incumbent Governor and Vice Governor. Ironically, similar thing happened during the previous election, where the current Governor was a new candidate with bountiful public support.

The same thing has happened over and over again in many elections across the globe. Take the U.S for example, when Obama was hailed jubilantly by the voters during the previous election, crowned as a symbol of change for the better and an end to racial prejudice. But now, public opinions seem to diverge as many feel the changes they want so badly have not been realised. In this manner public figures have risen and fallen from grace with their supporters.

Perhaps people are desperate, disappointed with the kind of life they are going through. Many of us here obviously feel the same, unsatisfied with everything around us, hoping for a change to come, desiring for a hero to emerge and fix everything in a single swoop.

When I was still in primary school, there was this Japanese manga (perhaps most of you have heard of it) called Doraemon. It was about a robot from the future, sent back to the past to aid a young, problematic student named Nobita. Doraemon will always come up with some magical tools that can solve any of Nobita's problems in a jiffy. This made me wishful, whenever the night falls on me, that a robot will come out of my drawer to my rescue. Since this has never happened to me, I also have stopped hoping for a hero to come. Some things are perhaps just meant to be and changes are not needed, come hell or high water.

Then, I came across a story of a Kenyan paralympic athlete, Henry Wanyoike, on Time magazine. A man whose vision was robbed in a single night, and along with his vision on that eventful night - a hope for a tomorrow. It has never come to me, even in my wildest imagination, that I would wake up blind, and live to see nothing but my own hopes getting crushed. While 95 percent of his world was gone on that single night, a desperate attempt by his mother for a cure led him to a German physician who did not restore his sight, but his vision. That was the trigger, and since then he has won a lot of competition, inspiring others to pursue their dreams in so doing.

Maybe heroes do exist after all. But some of their portrayals in many movies and comic books might have been over exaggerated. They do not beat up villains, and heal the corruption in their society in a blink of an eye. Heroes advocate changes, and time has its own luxury in letting them to take place and manifest. Sometimes the changes can be ongoing processes that do not even stop even when their advocates die. When Martin Luther King was assassinated, his dreams did not die with him, but keep on realising themselves even until now.

But most importantly, changes come from the individuals who wish them to happen so badly. Henry's German physician did not make him a winner, but inspired him, drove him to strife for his dreams. We do need heroes, but we are the one making those changes, realising the kind of life we want to have. Maybe this is a good thing to take note every time we complain about the kind of life we are living in, the kind of struggle we are facing on, or the kind of workload we are given with. Changes come from ourselves, and we do not need heroes when all of us collectively putting in effort to make them happen.