About when Sherlock said “Don’t make People into Heroes”

When I watched Sherlock for the first time almost two years back, this dialogue didn’t strike me as anything but another window into Sherlock’s pretence of being a man who was removed and ran solely on cold rationality. But rewatching it this time struck a chord with me. You see this time I had come to realise a number of crucial life lessons. 

First of, people are complicated creatures. They are wired to do the wrong thing every now and then. This may be either because their perception of right and wrong is not the same as yours or because although they know what is right, they have given up the reins to wrath, vainglory, envy, avarice, sloth, gluttony lust, or despair. Both conditions are as indestructible as human presence on this Earth. So yes, people are wired to hurt you. 

Secondly, putting anyone on a pedestal makes disappointment hard to receive from them. You see people are wired to do the wrong thing because of their nature, but wired to hurt you because of your own. You yourself are the one who gives people the power to hurt you emotionally. Sticks and stones may break your bones but in reality words and actions hurt you far worse than them because you let them lodge into your chest and pierce your heart like a dagger, instead of deflecting them like an unaffecting feather. But it isn’t really possible for a normal human being to take this power away from others, believe me I have tried. However, it is possible to ensure that this power we give remains the quick death inflicted by the swooping thrust of the dagger, instead of being the slow, painful death at the hands of a rusty, blunt knife, the power you give another by making them a hero, because people disappoint you but heroes can inflict pain so great that it will kill your soul a hundred times over. 

Maybe I have grown up in the last two years, maybe that’s what these epiphanies show. But what I am scared of is that maybe I have met and drifted apart from so many people and been let down so many times, that my innocence and my blind faith in humanity have been robbed from me. It’s like the time when I stopped believing in Santa Claus. Of course, it was my older brother who ruined it for me. But my thoughts back then weren’t that I was naive. Even today, I don’t believe I was naive for making people into heroes. I don’t think I was naive at all, I think humanity was a disappointment and a traitor for having let me down.