Heroes

Who are your heroes? That is, who do you look up to/learn from/emulate/etc?

This may be a generalization, though I will be careful to word it so that it's not all encompassing: A good number of young boys look up to athletes and (this is my guess) a similarly good number of young girls look up to movie stars... but it's interesting to see how one's heroes change as one grows up. And I've been thinking that maybe the kids who don't have typical heroes go on to live atypical lives (that's opening up a big can of worms!)

I'll offer my own feelings as an example:

In this rough order, and as well as I can remember, I looked up to athletes such as Michael Jordan. Then I looked up to successful people like Bill Gates. Then I got into my "I want to go to law school" phase and started looking up to lawyers like Alan Dershowitz (it helps that he came to speak at Galloway one year). Then I decided, for much of my college years, that I didn't really look up to anyone before finally I realized how lucky I am and started looking up to my parents.

So how do you differ? Is your timeline of heroes vastly different? And could who we look up to impact our current successes? I'd venture it at least impacts our current desires, if not being a good reflection of these desires...