the Hero - Jose Ortega Y'Gassett

What Ortega says about Quixote, I believe is true of any of us who are willing to take up the challenges that life present to us .

The Hero

[from: Meditations on Quixote, chapter 15 by Jose Ortega Y’ Gasset [  First published in Spain in 1914, English translation by Evelyn Rugg and Diego Marin for W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1961, reprinted in Norton Library edition in 1963.]

Now our story leads us back to this subject.  …This something is nothing less than the will of Don Quixote.  People may be able to take good fortune away from this neighbor of ours, but they will not be able to take away his effort and courage.

…In Don Quixote we have …a man who wishes to reform reality.  But is he not a piece of that reality?  Does he not live off it, is he not a consequence of it?  How is it possible for that which does not exist-a projected adventure-to govern and alter harsh reality? 

Perhaps it is not possible, but it is a fact that there are men who decide not to be satisfied with reality.  Such men aim at altering the course of things; they refuse to repeat the gestures that custom, tradition, or biological instincts forces them to make.  These men we call heroes, because to be a hero means to be one out of many, to be oneself.  If we refuse to have our actions determined by heredity or environment it is because we seek to base the origin of our actions on ourselves and only on ourselves.  The hero’s will is not that of his ancestors nor of his society, but his own.  This will to be oneself is heroism.

    I do not think that there is any more profound originality than this “practical”, active originality of the hero.  His life is a perpetual resistance to what is habitual and customary.  Each movement that he makes has first to overcome custom and invent a new kind of gesture.  Such a life is a perpetual suffering, a constant tearing oneself away from that part of oneself which is given over to habit and is a prisoner of matter.