Quite a while ago, I was conducting interviews at work and one of the questions I asked was “Who is your role model?”
I’m not entirely sure what I hoped to learn from this question. I had Googled “questions to ask interviewees” and taken the ones that I liked best.
The majority of people answered with one of their parents but one guy whose answer I remember said (and I’m paraphrasing): “you can’t have role models nowadays as they will more than likely let you down, look at Ryan Giggs.”
Recently I have been thinking a lot about this sort of thing. When I would describe someone as a role model, I’m generally thinking specifically of one element of their life which is known.
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| N.B. Nelson Mandela did not win the world cup. |
A role model isn’t someone that I would want to be completely. There are two main reasons for this – firstly no-one is perfect and I aspire to be perfect but secondly, and most importantly, I don’t want to be an exact copy of someone else. I want to take elements of things that I like within many others and try to emulate them to become a big mishmash of all the people I admire.
One of the reasons I’ve been thinking about this are two of the biggest news stories recently. Firstly, the Ian Watkins conviction. Lostprophets were part of the first generation of bands that I just didn’t get, along with Funeral For a Friend. I had no idea why people liked them and I realised I would never be young and hip again.
I do know a lot of people who liked them and who feel that their experiences are somehow tainted by recent events. I am of the opinion that art should be separate from the artist and should be appreciated in it’s own right, although had a similar revelation been made about one of the bands that I worshiped in my youth, I can’t say that I wouldn’t feel the same way as Lostprophets fans now do.
The fact is that you can never know everything about someone that you aspire to be like. You probably will never know everything about your close family and friends so you will only ever scratch the surface of what you know about a celebrity that you admire.
The other reason that has got me thinking about this is the death of Nelson Mandela. In my opinion, he did more to further the progression of humanity than anyone is likely to do in my lifetime. Yet, early in his life he was effectively a terrorist. My personal opinion is that people should be given a chance to rehabilitate themselves and change for the better which clearly Mandela did. However, some people will point to his earlier life and use that to try to dissuade people from using him as a role model.
A while ago, there was a backlash from liberal music fans when there was the suggestion that Frank Turner was right wing. They couldn’t have the man who had been a cult hero having a different political leaning to their own. This – along with a few other reasons – has made me ashamed to be a liberal recently, but more of that another time.
There are people who idolise the Beatles and John Lennon yet he was a wife beater. I’m fairly sure most Beatles fans don’t advocate domestic abuse. I could probably find more examples like this if I tried and if I actually had any knowledge of who is famous these days. Obviously the big examples above are the ones that make the headlines there will almost certainly be no-one whose life you could look at and not find something you dislike about it, no matter how small.
When you have a role model, you are not saying that you want to be exactly like them. You aspire to be the best you can be, as perfect as possible. If you want to be exactly like someone else then you lose your individuality. You are saying that you admire what they have done or how they behave in one area of their life and in that element of their existence you want to be more like them.