Don Quixote claims that if you want to become something, you should point towards that ideal; try to become exactly like the greatest person that ever did that, I can see his point, but I have some disagreements. I concur that we should point towards the ideals in our fields, but I don't think that we should strive to become them.
If you try to be another person, you wouldn't add anything of value to life, I'm of the idea that's why we should build an ideal that work for us. How do you do this? You take traits you admire from other people, and you pursue them in that aspect. That's why I think that building your own ideal from the ground up is better approach, taking what you admire from multiple sources, this will allow you to have a more "complete" ideal, giving you the chance you to become a more complete human being.
Fixating on only one people can bring problems too, because you put them on a pedestal, you can become blind to their weak spots, you may think that everything that they do is perfect —and all humans have flaws—, that also makes your ideal weaker, because it only relies on one pillar. Building your ideal from multiple people, allows your ideal to have multiple supports, so you can change things while you grow as a person without letting your whole ideal fall. You can choose things you admire from a lot people, and not because of that you endorse the whole person, you can learn from everyone, this would open the possibility to become you, to have your own interests, grow in all directions that interest you. And in the journey, suddenly you would be able to add value to the world, because you would have a perspective that no one has ever had.
Ideals change with time, that is a good sign, because it means you're growing. You would never become your ideal, because it is in constant evolution in parallel to you, but that's the beauty of it, an ideal is perfection, something to strive for. Just like Sisyphus does, we should go to the top of mountain over and over again. Learning to enjoy the journey, because if you become fixated on the endpoint, you would end up miserable, because this journey has no endpoint.
That is the thing I would add to the view of don Quixote, you shouldn't try to become one specific person, but the conglomerate of ideals that calls into your attention, craft your own ideal, and pursue the things that matter most to you.
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