Little Bruce Wayne walks into his living room one evening to find the bloodied bodies of his parents laying sprawled across the floor, the work of burglars. In his pain and anger, he swears to bring justice. And in that conviction was born the protector of Gotham city.
I catch myself too often in search of similar stories; it makes that almost unnatural drive and commitment in our heroes, a tad more believable. Such deeply personal, and sometimes traumatic stories seem to reconcile the contradictions one must sustain within oneself to achieve something meaningful; an ability to be sober and drunk at once perhaps, to be clear-sighted in action, not delusional about the value of one’s core convictions, yet exhibiting a simultaneous willingness to shield and cultivate an inner realm away from that same constant questioning glare (required for action).
And the stories themselves, they are perhaps but the birthmark by which I identify my heroes, those drunk on the ecstasy of living yet sober in their pursuits and convictions. Because it is my suspicion that it is not indeed incidents that make a story, but a sensitive soul’s desire to create meaning, its ability to sense the significance of events within a plausible wider narrative. And perhaps in the telling of such stories and the search for fitting endings to one’s own stories, is the germ of meaningful action. Maybe here too, all this wild theorizing and my own search for such superheroes in Cairo needs a little back-story.
