Why role models?
Children in primary school are guaranteed to be asked who or what they want to become when they are grown up at least once a week by their teacher, grandparents or the random uncle they see twice a year. Answers like firefighter, princess or professional soccer player are often followed by influential people they call their role models.
In each dad's life, there is this particular day when their children no longer view them as the only source of truth and tend to seek other people's opinions.
Over the years, our dreams about ourselves and our role models have changed. As young, innocent children, we can dream big and be everyone we want. The princess and soccer player life will most often never be that close again than in those young days. Sooner or later, we have to face reality. Spanish vocabulary and seemingly unsolvable math equations are blocking the path to our chosen career.
In this time when we're supposed to freely explore ourselves, we're punished the most for precisely that. I had to face that reality when I failed a class and had to repeat it at another school. Imagine that most of your life's future decisions, income, and social status are based on decisions you make when you're not even allowed to sign contracts, drive a car, or realistically earn money on your own. In this time, we break with our role models, as their ideal lives no longer match ours.
To be honest, I haven't fought about role models, especially mine, for a long time. Only a few weeks ago, when I read a book about the colliders at CERN, I realised that we never really get rid of them; they just tend to be more subtle.
Peter Higgs (one of the physicists who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson that explains how particles acquire their mass in the universe), the Nobel Prize winner who died in April 2024, is a role model for me because of his view on love.
At a glance, this might sound surprising as he is an expert in physics, but even more shocking is that his marriage lasted only nine years. My whole opinion about him is based on one sentence of the book where he describes the most important thing the love of his life: his beloved wife.
Our role models don't have to be perfect humans because they clearly don't exist. Followers, fame or money, don't determine how much a person affects us and is suitable to be a role model. All this doesn't matter if the role our model has improves our future decisions.
I might not become a professional soccer player anymore, but I know that I'm striving for the feeling of having a person in my life who is my beloved wife. I'm sure everyone has not one but multiple role models, and they change throughout our lives. And who knows maybe there is a future role model awaiting me in 🇫🇮.