Being a fan of animated films (mostly Pixar but am open to others) and wanting to please my dear children, we decided to venture out and see another…wait for it…animated film. In a year that was full of outstanding feature animations, this one was somewhat of an also-ran. That being said, The Tale of
Despereaux was not a complete disappointment. Though the story attempted to run in a dozen different directions at times (one critic referred to the script as "messy and unfocused"), it was an enchanting film with a central character that I appreciate—an unlikely hero with tremendous courage.
Though there were many traditionally embraced themes throughout, a couple of them jumped off the screen. These are two recurring themes that all of humanity has crossed paths with over and over again, but are especially prevalent in our current culture. Two seemingly unrelated, emotion-driven pursuits of our consciousness…or maybe they are related. The first is the need for heroes and the seeking-out of those whom inspire us or look to for hope. The second: fear and how we deal with it in our everyday lives.
Certainly they don't seem connected in any way. Maybe they are not. But one seems to unwittingly follow the other. Never has that been more evident than what I have seen unfold the last 12+ months in our great country. In fact, I would go as far as to say I don't think you can separate the two!! Let's go back to the story to see…
Early on in the film, the narrator was suggesting that "a hero seems to appear when we need them the most" (I'm paraphrasing for those of you whom have a tendency to google everything to demonstrate your superior knowledge of all subjects known to mankind). Our unassuming hero was little Despereaux. He was an undersized mouse with a big heart that embraced chivalry, honor, and commitment to name a few qualities. He never fit in back home since these were not common rodent attributes. Eventually, Despereaux
was banished from his village for demonstrating unusual courage and bravery. For Despereaux
violated the main tenet necessary to be a mouse: to cower and be afraid! Since he did not embrace fear he had to go!
Today in America, we are being taught to embrace fear in a similar fashion with our imperiled financial institutions, auto industry left in shambles, and housing market that has made the word "foreclosure" an everyday part of our lexicon. We seem to be embracing fear--not unlike Despereaux's village—over the state of our economy. And when fear becomes a catalyst to act upon the circumstances that surround us, we tend to look outward for help; relief; or simply rescue. Fear's enemy is courage.
Fear also triggers a mechanism that we are all too familiar with known as "fight or flight". That leaves us with two outcomes when dealing with fear. We can stand and fight and face our fear, which is exercising courage. We can also take the path of "flight", or running away from our fear. By taking the latter path your fear remains to be addressed at a later time. Or maybe rather than addressing it we find ourselves a substitute, or helper, to fight our fear for us. This is the impetus which causes us to pursue the other thing—the need for a hero to arrive in order to help us through, or just simply rescue us!
Since late in 2007, we saw the dark clouds of a bad economy coming together and hovering over us. The floodgates opened in October of 2008 when the market crashed, followed by the lending market, housing market, automobile market, etc. Our fear began to build which lead to doubts. Nightly news soundbites would remind us of just how bad things were getting. Then comparisons to The Great Depression began. Fear begets fear. Americans in their suffering began to blame our former president, and yet strangely embrace their fear of the economy. They began to look for a hero. Someone whom could alleviate or conquer that fear of a broken economy.
So we had identified the problem: a crumbling economy. Fear caused us in flight to find the fall guy for our problem: our former president. Now we have completed the "fear cycle" by electing a hero: our current president. Someone we can feel good about again! Someone whom will stand with us in this fight! Someone whom can provide us shelter from the economic storm! Now before you jump to conclusions about my analogy, this is not about demeaning our current president in anyway. Nor is it an attempt to defend our former president (although he was not the one taking 100 million dollar salary after the country had bailed them out like some of those "financial leaders").
No, this is about The American Public at large and how it chooses to deal with fear in the face of crisis. And in our collective fear, choosing to focus on politicians rather than on ourselves. We decided that we needed a hero rather than make greedy Wall Street tycoons accountable. We decided that we needed someone to give us hope rather than lean on the hope of our friends, family, and personal faith. We listened to a politician tell us he will strengthen our communities rather than seeing what we can do to help our neighbor get through the crisis until the storm passes.
I'm not saying our country should have elected the other guy. Or that we did not elect the one that deserved it. All I am saying is that in fear we made our collective decision to nominate a hero. My concern is that as America throughout history has had a long line of political failures to serve as examples that we should not go down that path again of hero worship. But rather, fight fear with courage and look inward. Become more self-sufficient without placing blame as we ride out the storm. We blame banks for not keeping their financial house in order, which we should. But many among us live beyond our means maxing-out every credit card that we can get our hands on. We act so righteously indignant when a CEO flies his personal jet to Washington to beg for money that they don't have to keep their business afloat, as we should. But do we attempt to carve the excess from our lives until things improve? I'm not speaking to those who are truly suffering because the economic chaos; the ones whom have lost jobs to businesses closing, the ones whom are close to retirement and lost much of their nest egg in the market crash. These people have a right to be angry and feel betrayed.
The answer is to face our fear with courage. Do our part to help others in their time of need. Do your best to become self-sufficient and not depend on revolving credit. And instead of embracing a "hero" in Washington, embrace your family, friends, and faith. That is, just like Despereaux, what a real hero looks like!
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