Overcoming shortcomings - Real heroes

“That man was dealt a bad hand.”

This is a phrase that I have heard in many variations over my lifetime. It is the belief that a person was given a nearly unwinnable situation in life and their shortcomings are not their fault.

This seems to be an excusable factor in someone’s life, and most give at least a little bit of pity on a person who seems to be coming short so often.

This is often the other side of a coin from a person who rises to be a hero because they have been given every advantage in life. A child is born with superpowers, a person falls into toxic waste, a person is taken under the wing of a magical entity because they are the Chosen One - these are the stories of heroes that were fated to be heroes. they could not be anything less.

But just like I teach my kids, if someone has no fear, then they truly never had courage.

I see two problems (there are more, but do you really have that much time for me to go through them all?), 1) Too many people forgive someone’s choices because of that badly dealt hand, and 2) heroes are those that would have always been heroes.

I believe both these make for bad stories. Both these don’t allow for people to go outside the boxes that seemingly well-meaning people put them in.

Many years ago I knew a gentleman named Tracy (yeah, he knows, and he is okay with it). He grew up poor, but happy. He went to one of the poorest schools in the city, but tried hard at every opportunity. His parents were together, but struggled. They made the best out of a bad situation. When he was younger he started messing around with playing a piano at his church. Some didn’t like seeing a kid messing around in church on a church owned piano. (mind you this was not during service times). But the pastor allowed him to come in and play whenever he wanted as long as no one else needed the main sanctuary.

He would play whenever he could, and eventually playing turned into producing, which turned into conducting. He got a full-ride scholarship to college because of his amazing musical talent. I remember one of the last times I talked to him: He waxed poetic that too many people expected nothing out of him because of his race and where he grew up. He hated that, he felt blessed to be given the chances he had, but he said, “If I didn’t take them, then those chances would have meant nothing. ‘I’ wanted to succeed. Not because of what I was, but because of what I wanted to be.”

That stuck with me, people inferred all these things about him because of where he came from and what he looked like. To those people he “got dealt a bad hand,” to him, he was given a lot of opportunities.

I wonder where he is now.

I write a lot of characters that shouldn’t be heroes, instead should be wallowing in self-pity, looking for a hand out. Based purely off the way a chunk of the world acts right now. But instead of seeking charity they work hard to overcome areas they struggle in. For example, I have written two deaf characters (two different stories, but I digress) that not only have grown passed their disability but have used it to their advantage.

These type of characters are relatable. They show the reader that “circumstances be damned, my future is my own to create.” Characters that have everything handed to them, that are just amazing at everything are boring, and are truly unrelatable. Super person X grabs a sword, they are instantly the best at wielding it, handley beating people that have practiced the blade for ten plus years…

What does that teach people? “Either you got it or you don’t.”

I’ll leave you with one last example from Red Dwarf, a long running British comedy Sci-fi show:

A main character named Rimmer is kind of the de facto leader of a rag-tag crew of space faring people/creatures. He is a jerk, snobbish, somewhat frumpy, and always blames his problems on something/someone else. In episode 5 of season 4 he meets an alternate reality version of himself. This Rimmer is charismatic, decisive, one who maintains a presence that is felt by everyone in the room. The crew of Red Dwarf loves the alternate Rimmer. The main Rimmer hates him - only seeing a version of himself that was given every advantage, and he could have been that way had he been given the same opportunities to be amazing.

At the end of the episode it turns out that the biggest difference is that the alternate, awesome Rimmer was that he was held back a grade when the real Rimmer was squeezed into advancing. The alternate Rimmer was made fun of and called stupid, leading him to work hard to show how amazing he could be, even though he was held back. He eventually worked so hard he became the awesome version of Rimmer in this alternate reality.

Alternate Rimmer wasn’t amazing because he was given something that the normal Rimmer was not. He, himself, decided to change and become better. He had no one to blame but himself, and he became better because of ‘his’ choices, not someone else’s.

If you have been “dealt a bad hand” it just means you have to try a different strategy. The cards in poker are only as powerful as the person who holds them. A single pair can beat a straight flush if the pair is held by a better bluffer. Does it take hard work, yes. But hard work goes farther than random chance any day of the week.