PEDESTAL SYNDROME
This is nothing to do with Joe Biden and everything to do with us.
I remember watching Barak Obama’s inauguration back in 2009 through blurred vision ’cause I was leaking from my eyes.
I remember thinking how great his tenure at the White House was going to be for all of us around the world.
I remember marveling at his oratorship and how I was caught up in the promise of ‘Yes we can’.
I remembered all of this as I watched Joe Biden’s inauguration this Wednesday, the 20th January, and I held my breath.
I wasn’t leaking from my eyes.
I wasn’t imagining how phenomenal his 4-year time in the White House will be.
I didn’t marvel at his orator skills.
Instead I held my breath because I’m concerned that we ‘the world’ are willing him to be the hero archetype.
To be the one that ‘makes America great again’ (dreadful reference… too soon I know but true).
Imagine for a moment the inordinate amount of pressure that we are projecting onto this mere mortal.
We’re doing it again: The Pedestal Syndrome.
And my concern, or even fear, is that when he is unable to pole vault per our expectations that we’re going to make him out to be the villain.
And with this all said, not for one moment, not a single solitary blink of an eye moment, does this exonerate him or any of us for being held accountable for our actions, behaviours, statements. Because accountability is the response, the reaction to who and what we are and choose to be.
Instead of hoping, and I do despise that word, that he is going to do this on his own and that we are to some degree absolved from being involved, which ‘allows’ us to throw stones when he doesn’t, what if we all, the world over, take action to make ourselves great, to make our cities great, to make our countries great and when it goes awry, because it will, we take ownership of our own actions, thoughts and behaviours.
That we are both the hero and villain of our own action and stories.
That we recognize that even though he is the President of the United States, he is mortal.
