1
A quote who I cannot source and cannot forget goes as follows: "A man is not free till his father dies."
There is a tragedy in parenting. You're expected to sacrifice your life, your goals, your dreams, for your children. You teach all you have ever found useful. You share warnings and wisdom. You hope to equip them for life.
The tragedy is succeeding.
The child consumes your sacrifices, assimilates your goals, and creates their own dreams. They quickly learn all you have to teach. They forgo your warnings and wisdom to experience hardships first hand. If you have properly equipped them, they will leave you.
So too does the aspiring individual experience this cycle with the greatest idols history has remembered. Seek the greatest characters history can offer you. Choose to learn from their sacrifices, goals, and dreams. Assimilate what of their work is useful to you. Integrate their wisdom and warnings. Allow their struggles and life works to equip you further for the life you hope to live.
And like you did with your parents, let them go when you have finished. Allow yourself to become an individual that maybe a child from a coming generation will discover on day. Live a life worth learning about.
2
There is a cycle beginning here. Growth for the youth is best propelled forward by the seeking of great idols, learning about these idols with a worshippers ferver, and than the killing of these idols.
As we assimilate these idols intellectually, they add to us consciously.
There are those who seek no growth, and to them, these ideas need not apply. To those who seek growth, beware; the failure to kill off idols once they have been assimilated is to stunt one's growth.