This world has been fortunate enough to have great avatars, great prophets, and great visionaries that have helped greatly to make this world and civilization better because of their actions, wisdom, and insight. However, in many cases, a significant portion of these invaluable personages have left us, through foul means or not, way too soon, and it seems often times that those that thereby replace such, are hopelessly outclassed and not really properly prepared to take on what needs to be taken on; but yet, the world and civilization just keeps on keeping on and in many aspects, progressing, nevertheless.
While it makes sense to admire those that are clearly of immense personal value, it is a mistake to believe that our collective role should ever simply be just one of admiration, as opposed to our real collective role, which should be to boldly take the baton of those that have led us and to therefore not only continue the race, but to finish it, well. So then, the real reason why those that are our heroes, leave us, seemingly before their time, is so that we will not forever be stuck in some sort of mode of "hero worship", but recognize that each one of us has inside of us, hero qualities that need to be developed and utilized.
While it is nice to ride the coattails of those that have coattails worth riding, the bottom line is that each one of us, without exception, will at some point, have to stand up upon our own two feet, whether united with others of like mind, or by our self, in order to do our part to help effect the change that will thereby assist in making our civilization better. This signifies that the courage that we admire in others, as well as the wisdom that we so desire to have, are the very attributes that we need to make the effort to become, as well.
Every good and loving parent wants their children to not only be good for something, but also to achieve meaningful things; so that it follows that those parents want their children to the extent so possible, to exceed their own achievements, whether such is done when they are still physically present upon this earth or not. This so signifies that when we as a people suffer deeply from the great loss of those great men and women taken from us before their time, that we owe it to our heroes, that when we subsequently too get knocked down, that we keep on getting back up so as to continue onward upon our chosen path.
Life is really about growth, and in particular, the positive growth of our character, of which, we demonstrate this growth best by courageously facing the obstacles that we come across, and through our successful overcoming of those obstacles, we prove our mettle. While, we may not be successful the first time, or the second, or not even the third, we will, given enough time, and enough determination, overcome that which precludes us from the promised land so promised to everyone, who is faithful to that cause, which is to rise above all that is wrong, so as to successfully embrace all that is right.