Flawed Heroes

I've spent a portion of today thinking about flawed heroes. Heroes are role models. Ideally, their behavior would be worthy of admiration and emulation, but they aren't always that good. Sometimes, heroes have less-than-heroic traits. In those cases, the best heroes are the ones who acknowledge their flaws and strive to overcome them.

In fact, those role models may be even better than those who are already perfect. Perfect people don't actually exist, making perfect heroes difficult to relate to. It's far easier, and more beneficial, to relate to the heroes who strive to overcome their flaws and hopefully eventually succeed at becoming better people and even better heroes.

I think that it's important for some heroes to have flaws. We can have a few moral paragons, but we should have more down-to-earth heroes, too. And when heroes do have flaws, I believe that it is vital that the heroes come to recognize their flaws and strive to overcome them, even if they don't always succeed. A big part of the main purpose of life is self-improvement, so it's important to have role models who have some room to improve and who actively try to do so.