Never get too close to your heroes

I learned this lesson a few years ago and received a reminder of sorts today. When we set people on a pedastal, it is inevitable they will disappoint us in the end. It usually happens when we grow enough to see them at eye level on that pedastal. It all comes crashing down then, and we realize they are human afterall, fallible, and uninspiring.

I found a picture of a church in Nyarube, a scene of unimaginable horror in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. A photojournalist of sorts had gone to Rwanda and taken some amazing pictures. His journal seemed genuine and I felt a kindred spirit in trying to let as many people as possible know what happened in the Maryland-sized country. He also asked people to contact him about his work. I sent him an email telling him the books I'd read, how I'd become heavily interested in Africa, how I'd managed to connect the genocide in Rwanda in my classroom with The Diary of Anne Frank and the Holocaust, and how my students were really getting it. I told him of plans to show his church picture on the television in my classroom because it would so moving after I had read earlier to my students about the horrible scene there.

He replied with three words punctuated poorly. I read his words and saw his photographs and felt connected through our mutual repulsion. I was passionate and expressive and eloquent in my email. And he took the time to write three words. What a letdown.

Another solid lesson in the faultiness of building people up to any height, even one that simply stands as high as yourself.