You don't have to be the hero

Not all heroes wear capes. Some wear a heavy cloak of guilt and resentment!

Years ago, I accompanied my grandmother’s choir on a trip to Italy. It was one of those regional tours that involve early wake-up times, many hours trapped on a charter bus, and surprise trips to Tuscan wineries for which your tour leader gets a kickback.

I have a number of grim stories to tell from the experience, but one mundane one always stands out: As I was tearing my way through Audrey Niffenegger’s inspired novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, my grandmother was poking her way through a thriller by a second-rate author. She would read half a page, grumble about how boring the book was, and read a little more.

“Do you want to read this one? It was amazing,” I asked, once I had finished my book.

“No, that’s all right.” Sighing, she recommitted to the paperback in front of her.

No one knew it at the time, by my grandmother was already sick with lung cancer. Less than three years later, she was gone.

And as we combed through the many lovely things my grandmother had collected in her life, I found it: That dumb old book she had been reading on our trip together, still with the bookmark in the middle.

I’m glad that Gran never finished the book — but sad that she spent even a moment feeling a sense of guilt and obligation about it. Life is indeed too short.

I have written before about the rules we hang onto even when they make us miserable. “If I start this book, I must finish it,” is in a specific category of rules I call “I Have to Be the Hero.”

There are big “I have to be the hero” moments, like supporting moochy roommates, romantic partners, or adult children because “they have nowhere else to go.” As much damage as the big ones do, the little ones are problematic as well. They don’t appear to cost us much, but they can cause us to rack up lots of losses over time.

If we buy into the idea that hard work is valuable for its own sake, we might find ourselves in crummy situations that make us feel virtuous when we’re actually wasting precious time and energy.

For example, when I was the sole administrator of a busy music school that, at the time, was serving about 150 families, it took me an entire day to invoice the clients for the month to come.

I would enter the charges one by one into my accounting software (four to five music lessons per student), then print out all of the invoices and address labels. Painstakingly folding each invoice along with a peppy newsletter, I would stuff them into the envelopes, seal them, and affix the address label and stamp, continuing as day turned to night and industriousness turned to misery.

You know, for the first several months I didn’t even use self-sealing envelopes — I even had to lick the darn things myself when I didn’t have a sponge!

What do I do now? We (because I am no longer trying to be the hero by doing it all myself) use a system that automatically charges the client’s credit card after every four lessons. My team sets it up once for the entire year. I get ten days of my life back every year from that one system alone.

The saddest thing about a lot of supposed “hero” moments is that they are invisible. Even though I was responsible for making sure a dozen people got paid on time, nobody cared how I made that happen. My suffering didn’t lead to a better result. How nice that you cleared the snow off everyone’s car even though it made you late for work! The sun came out thirty minutes later and did the work for you. You’re the most pathetic character in a comic book nobody reads: The Doomed Doer. “No job is too pointless for me! I wish no recognition but still feel resentful!”

If we want to overcome a tendency to earn ourselves points by taking the long way around, we have to consider the outcome we’re looking for.

In the case of my grandmother, if the object of reading a novel was to enjoy herself, she would have stopped reading the boring thriller immediately and found something else. Hopefully she did do this eventually, and that’s why the book remained unfinished upon her passing.

As for me, my work life got better when I began to value myself and my own time. That allowed me to invest in more efficient systems to achieve a much better result than my blood, sweat, and tears were providing.

When we come to realize that we’re not actually saving the day with all our silly work, we must then turn to the next generation to help them do the same. We have to stop designing schools to favor a high volume of work that leads to nothing. We don’t want them to learn the hard way that things must be done the hard way.

It can be a challenge to hang up your cape and cuffs and be an ordinary citizen again, but I guarantee you will be happier. All those heroes are kind of broody, anyway.