farmdoc's blog post number 22

It’s natural, I reckon, for people to have heroes. I sure did. My role models included sportsmen (Bob Rose, Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall), folk singers (Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton), doctors (Ignaz Semmelweis, John Snow, Arthur Conan Doyle), environmentalists (Gustav Weindorfer, Bob Brown) and civil disobedients (Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi). Also actors: I used to mull over the crucial question of who would play me in a film of my life. And the sequence probably reflects my life’s evolution: Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Woody Harrelson, Tim Robbins, Bruce Willis. Why Bruce? Well there’s the (lack of) hair; and the delicious fact that this archetypal tough guy was too petrified to fly for months after 9/11. In recent years my list of heroes has gradually dwindled – to zero. I don’t have heroes now. I don’t need them. I am who I am – and who I always will be. More or less. Oh there will be changes, but not major ones, and not at all due to any heroes. I am content with who I am. If I was told I had only a short time to live, I would want to be physically closer to my darling family, but I wouldn’t do anything else different. My heroes have played a big role in forming the present me. Thanks, guys. Including you, Bruce.