You don't choose your heroes

I have always found it fascinating how we choose the people we surround ourselves with. We like to believe that friendship is a completely rational decision: this person is funny, that person is kind, this one is interesting, and somehow after a sufficient amount of coffee and shared experiences we have consciously decided that these are our people. But I think there is something happening underneath all of that which is much more interesting. We recognize pieces of ourselves in other people. We notice a similar sense of humour, the same obsession with a particular subject, a familiar way of thinking, the same values or even the same strange little personality trait that nobody else seems to understand. And suddenly we feel like we have found our people. Psychology actually has a fair amount to say about this. Research on the similarity-attraction effect has repeatedly found that perceived similarity plays an important role in attraction and relationship formation, while newer research suggests that we often interpret similarity as evidence that another person has an underlying "essence" similar to our own.

But this mirror works both ways. Sometimes the people who irritate us the most are also telling us something about ourselves. Projection is a psychological concept describing the process of attributing our own characteristics, feelings or impulses to somebody else. In its classical form, it was described as a defence mechanism: something uncomfortable inside ourselves becomes easier to tolerate when we can locate it outside of ourselves. Now, I don't think every annoying person we encounter is secretly a reflection of our deepest psychological wounds. Sometimes people are simply annoying. Some people really are rude. Some people chew with their mouths open and deserve absolutely no further psychological investigation. But when a particular characteristic in someone else produces an unusually strong emotional reaction in us, I think it is worth becoming curious. Why does this bother me so much? What exactly am I seeing? And, more uncomfortably, do I recognize any part of it in myself?

This can actually become a useful personal guideline. If I repeatedly find myself judging someone for being arrogant, perhaps I should ask whether I have a complicated relationship with my own ambition. If somebody's need for attention makes me furious, maybe there is a part of me that wishes I felt more comfortable taking up space. If I cannot stand someone who constantly talks about their achievements, perhaps I am struggling with my own desire to be recognized. And if I hate somebody for being lazy, maybe I should investigate why I give myself so little permission to rest. None of this means that our criticism is automatically wrong or that every flaw we identify in somebody else exists inside us. It simply means that our emotional reactions can contain information. The person in front of us might be telling us something about themselves, but our reaction to them can tell us something about us.

And then there is the other side of the spectrum: admiration. Because if our enemies can become mirrors, so can our heroes. Think about the people you admired as a child. Maybe it was Superman because he was powerful and used that power to protect people. Maybe it was a musician because they seemed completely free. Maybe it was an athlete because they possessed discipline you desperately wanted for yourself. Maybe it was a teacher who made you feel intelligent or a fictional character who seemed fearless in situations where you felt small. We tend to describe these people as role models, but I think the more interesting question is: why this person? Out of all the millions of people who have ever existed, why did this particular person capture your imagination? What did you see in them that made you think, even subconsciously, "I want some of that"?

There is research that makes this idea particularly interesting. A 2015 study by Ines Schindler and colleagues found that admiration was associated with self-expansion partly through a tendency to emulate admired people. In other words, admiration can become a mechanism through which we imagine ourselves growing into new possibilities. This makes sense when you think about it. We rarely admire somebody randomly. We admire characteristics that mean something to us. Courage. Intelligence. Creativity. Beauty. Independence. Discipline. Charisma. Compassion. Freedom. Sometimes we admire something we already possess and recognize in another person. Sometimes we admire something that exists only in a very underdeveloped form inside ourselves. And sometimes, if we're being completely honest, we admire something precisely because we don't have it yet.

Which is why I think choosing a hero is a little bit like being a fan and a hater at the same time. We are fans because we recognize something beautiful, powerful or familiar in that person. But there can also be a tiny element of envy hiding underneath the admiration. Not necessarily the ugly kind of envy where we want somebody else to lose. More like the uncomfortable realization that they are expressing something we wish we could express ourselves. They are living a version of something that exists somewhere inside our own imagination. The musician who has the courage to perform might represent the creative person we suppressed. The entrepreneur might represent the freedom we crave. The athlete might represent the discipline we wish we had. The person who speaks their mind might represent the version of ourselves who stopped asking for permission.

So maybe the people we choose are never completely random. Our friends can reveal the parts of ourselves we recognize and enjoy. The people we dislike can reveal the parts we struggle to accept. And our heroes can reveal the parts we want to develop. Other people become a strange psychological map of our own identity. We walk through life thinking we are simply observing everyone else, when in reality we are constantly comparing them against the internal blueprint we carry of ourselves. Research on social projection has repeatedly demonstrated that people use their own characteristics as a reference point when making judgments about others, particularly when they perceive similarity.

Maybe this is why I have become increasingly interested in paying attention to my reactions rather than immediately judging them. Instead of asking only, "What is wrong with this person?", sometimes it is more useful to ask, "Why is this person affecting me?" And instead of asking only, "Why do I admire this person so much?", perhaps we should ask, "What are they showing me about myself?" Because our strongest reactions might contain clues. The people we love, the people we cannot stand and the people we put on pedestals can all become mirrors, each reflecting a slightly different version of ourselves. And perhaps the ultimate goal is not to become more like our heroes or less like our enemies, but to understand what our reactions to them are trying to teach us about who we already are and who we still want to become.

You don't choose your heroes – you recognize them.

Love,

Faja