• In a world of selfishness, dishonesty, and discrimination, how do our children find their way? Conventional wisdom says that we only learn by example, and just look at what examples abound: selfishness with criminals like Bernie Madoff and other Wallstreet scoundrels; dishonesty with blatant false marketing by actors on TV; and discrimination by politicians against people of other religions, other sexual orientation, other cultures, other anything. Indeed, if our children only learned by these kinds of exam

ples, we would be in big trouble. But here is where mental health and choice comes in.
• During our lives, especially when young, every one of us must be on a quest for meaning, and experts say that mostly we find our way by choosing examples for living. I learned first from my parents' and then there was the farmer who taught work ethic, the football couch who taught toughness, the debate couch who taught intellectual curiosity, the college classmate who taught kindness, and the med school professor who taught the importance of  honest science. It is true that we grow most, not from books, conferences, lectures, or rules, but rather by example from the heroes around us.
• The religious expert Joseph Cambell taught us that the "hero's quest" is a story that come from every culture as a metaphor to help us in our search for meaning. The classic hero story of Greek mythology begins with an innocent baby, born from one mortal parent crossed with a god, who somehow escapes an evil menace, and

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