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Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about admiration, idolization and influence.
Why do we have the need to idolize and worship people? I think it’s because we want to externalize our heart’s condition, we want to have the embodiment of our aspirations and dreams in flesh, on a poster on our wall, as a sweet voice in our stereo or in what ever form it may be.
We try to connect with something that is similar to us (or rather, what we think we are). We are trying to find ourselves from external things.

It can be a pretty misleading and unsatisfying task though, because most people seem to go about their lives based on almost a primal instinct. We reach towards things that give us immediate pleasure and we avoid and run away from things that give us immediate pain. This makes people follow and idolize the types that possess some apparently attractive qualities like strength, sexual attraction, aggressiveness and so on. We idolize what we want for ourselves, and the main need is to be recognized, respected, admired, to be wanted. But the qualities that are attractive for the sensual and external part of our being seem to turn against us in the long run. If we get attached to the role of being attractive and wanted by the opposite (or the same) sex, we will suffer badly when our bodies deteriorate and become saggy and ugly. All we are left with are some browned black&white pictures in our photo albums to prove that we used to be desirable.
Or if you get admiration by being aggressive and dominating, that will always come back to bite you in the ass. People will turn against you and force you to build higher walls around you to separate and guard yourself from others.

We had a visitor here a couple of months ago who lived her childhood and youth in New York City. As we were picking tomatoes in the garden under the California sun, she was talking about her teenage years. She was involved in the early New York hardcore scene since she was 12 or something, and she told some crazy stories back from the days, like how the people from Murphy’s Law would go around and set homeless people on fire.
I was into punk since I was 13 and bought a lot of records of those old legendary NY hardcore bands and used to read about them in zines and websites, so it was interesting to hear someone’s take on that whole phenomenon who was right there. She couldn’t believe that on the other side of the world (like in Scandinavia) a lot of young people would idolize these punks who for her were just a bunch of screwed up kids from her neighborhood.
It’s really hard for me to relate to it now that I somehow admired people who’d make living torches out of beggars. Or stab gays in Tompkins Square Park. There are just so many bad, useless influences out there that somehow people get into and make them look cool.

From a spiritual perspective it’s crucial to be careful of who we idolize. I don’t think that admiration or worship is a bad thing in all circumstances. Not at all. It’s a most natural and beautiful thing, but it just has to be directed to the right source, otherwise it will prove to be troublesome.
Humans are extremely impressionable and it’s impossible to avoid being influenced by our surroundings, because we can’t exist without a context. That’s why it’s most important to seek the kind of environment and company that really aids getting to know our full potential and progressing towards all we can be, instead of running off track because of some superficial glimmer that is always “almost” within reach but can never be caught. Most of us unfortunately seem to function like that and that’s why when some people make decisions that seem very unbecoming at first and dedicate their lives for something that doesn’t seem to bring any immediate benefit, most think they are going against common sense and are self-destructive, but in the end that path often turns out to be much more satisfying and natural.
We have to kill the idols in our minds that drag us away from what is really good and valuable and permanent. They may seem attractive, desirable, powerful and so on, but just give it some time and all you’ll see is a bunch of skeletons colliding and clanking their hollow bones together (analogy copyright: 108/Vic Dicara). It’s so superficial. There’s much more to this. There must be.