A Happy People Have No Need of Heroes

As I walked into Orgosolo, this mural stands to welcome you, amidst the first wall to the inner town. It doesn't announce itself. It doesn’t dominate the wall or demand reverence. It shares its space with other murals—layered, almost crowded by the windows and other murals — as if it knows it is not meant to stand alone. At its centre is an old man, unremarkable at first glance. No raised fist. No heroic posture. In fact just a hat, white beard and a walking stick. A face shaped by time, looking outward without drama, without promise. And above him, almost casually, the words: "felice il popolo non ha bisogno di eroi"(A happy people have no need of heroes). I remember standing there longer than I expected to. Not because the mural was grand, it wasn’t. Not a single letter was capitalized: it felt unsettlingly honest. The man on the wall didn’t look like someone history would remember. And yet, the sentence attached to him carried more weight than many of the louder, more defiant murals around town. It wasn’t a slogan. It was an observation. One that stayed with me long after I left Sardegna, returning in moments where I least expected it far from the gorgeous island.

I have spent a large part of my life trying to understand what privilege really means. Not the obvious forms—power, wealth, or influence—but the quieter ones, the kinds that are rarely named yet immediately recognized. The way seemingly harmless milestones—the family you are born into, the neighborhoods you grow up in, the schools you attend, the social circles you align yourself with—can subtly usher someone into an invisible circle. A circle that grants legitimacy, credibility, and the presumption of competence long before character or intention is ever examined.

Over time, I learnt average is not good enough. Average academically. Average professionally. Average financially. In a society shaped by competition and comparison, median performance often feels like failure—something to be escaped rather than accepted. I have felt this tension personally. Society seems to reduce even relationships to checklists. Effort, risk, and commitment involved seemed secondary to whether we met externally sanctioned markers of success. Authority in society often demands winning at extreme odds—beating 99.99% of participants in competitive exams or the entry level job with a million dollar paycheck. Those who succeed are celebrated, elevated, and slowly transformed into heroes. This happens not only in examinations, but in elections, in cinema, in business—where breaking through, creates individuals we credit with outcomes far larger than any one person could reasonably own.

As I travelled more and reflected—this grew from awareness to discomfort. Not because I found perfect, but because some societies preferred quality of life and relationships more than others. Some were less invested in turning individuals into exceptions. Instead they constantly debated what individual success to celebrate and how. Even when I look at the character of two heros that my country gave the world: Buddha and Gandhi, the value of their heroism is undermined, if we do not truly invest in their character but reduce their persona into imagery. Substance matters more than symbols. Systems more than stories. Reliability more than reverence. And I began to feel that the quote in Orgosolo was not poetic at all—it was diagnostic.

Five lamps on my street in a row stopped working. We had a long stretch of darkness for a while. My father reported it to the electrical worker, then followed up, patiently, more than once. Nothing happened. Eventually, he wrote to a local politician. The lamps were fixed the next day. What stayed with me wasn’t the delay, but how natural this sequence felt. No one was careless. No one was heroic. And yet, a simple problem seemed to require hierarchical authority before the system responded.

Elsewhere, when I faced a similar problem, I reached out to someone I knew, assuming a familiar intervention might help. Instead, they pointed me to a process—where to report the issue, how it would be tracked, and what response time to expect. There was no need to follow up with a person, no favour to be called in. The problem wasn’t solved because someone important stepped in, but because the system already knew how to listen.

A society that works only when someone exceptional steps in places an unfair burden on both sides—on the problem and on the person who is expected to solve it. Heroes burn out. Authority distorts incentives. And everyone else learns to wait instead of act. Dignity, by contrast, emerges where everyday needs are met through everyday processes—reliably, quietly, and without spectacle. Mature societies do not eliminate excellence, ambition, or leadership. They simply stop requiring them for daily life to function. They build systems that assume competence rather than demand reverence, and cultures that value contribution without turning success into myth. In doing so, they allow people to live fuller lives—not as exceptions striving to be noticed, but as participants who belong. And as my beloved state heads into elections, I hope this is remembered, and that people vote with a sense of individual responsibility rather than faith in heroics. Perhaps a happy people do not reject heroes at all. They simply no longer need them.