Most accounts of people meeting their heroes end up in disappointment. People complain of entitled assholes who do not seem anything like the kind, charming people they see on a screen. People are struck by how broken, how flawed their heroes can be. But I think the thing that strikes most people is how ordinary their heroes are. How human. How much like them.

Meeting our heroes can be strange because it is a reminder of how they made it while being ordinary. They somehow got over all the crippling shame and judgement most of us cast on ourselves before we have even attempted something decent. When we meet our heroes, we see what it could have been like if we tried long enough, swallowing some pride, looking like losers for a while. How they continued trying when most would have given up. If we had let ourselves be ‘cringe’ and ‘try hards’ in the pursuit of something we wanted, maybe we could have made it too.

And when we got there, everyone would meet us and exclaim at how ordinary we were. And yet not.