A la fin de l’envoi, je touche!

In order to introduce myself briefly, I will explain my username and the attached video.

My name is Samantha, which means “the listener” in some language or another.  I wish they had taken it farther and named me “the observer,” for that is what I am best at.  I am naturally a lover and pursuer of heroes, finding characters and loving them completely, emulating them in my dull life in as many ways as I can.  My adventures are small, safe, meaningless compared to theirs, but I like to think that our spirits share a certain spark that makes life worth living.  

One of my favorite heroes is the French Cyrano de Bergerac, a lonely man blessed with great skill with the weapons of sword and tongue, but cursed with a rather sizeable nose.  He falls in love with the beautiful Roxanne, who unfortunately loves a man named Christian.  Christian, though beautiful and brave, is inarticulate, and unable to woo Roxanne.  Cyrano, devastated but unsurprised by Roxanne’s affection for Christian, agrees to be his words, hide in darkness and lend Christian his gift of poetry so that he and Roxanne might live happily ever after.  Just after Roxanne and Christian get married, however, both Cyrano and Christian are called into battle, and Christian is killed before Roxanne ever discovers the deception. 

In the attached video you see why I love Cyrano from the bottom of my heart.  He is brave, strong, and bold, as any hero should be… But there is so much more to him.  He knows love, the real kind based upon a mutual friendship and understanding, uncommon in our experience. He knows sacrifice, choosing the happiness and well-being of others as his great cause.  He knows poetry, playing with words as a musician does his instrument, never apologizing, never hesitating.  In this man we see the instant and fearless composition of words.  But what makes him great, what separates him from other heroes in my mind, is the coupling of this composition with the passionate pursuit of actions which reflect those words.  He is true, to himself and others, not in the falsely humble way of the religious or the crass manner of the opinionated, but in the sympathetic and determined way of the hero.

Anyway, that is who I admire.  So maybe that will tell you a little about me.