Every year on 10 November friends from long ago wish me a happy birthday.

The thing is: it isn’t my birthday.

When I was eighteen I decided I was sick of everybody telling me what to do, so I decided to get free—so I joined the Marines. Ten November is the Marine Corps’ birthday. Every year on this day, I’m given the opportunity to reflect on my time in the Corps. Not surprisingly, as I grow older the nature of that reflection changes.

This morning I am up while the rest of town still sleeps and I remember running PT in the still-dark mornings on Paris Island, South Carolina. The stink of our sweat mixed with the sweet reek of Avon Skin So Soft—something like grandma’s rose water perfume—we all wore because that’s what kept the sand fleas off. The bass of many male voices singing badly echoed out into the muggy heat and our tromping footfalls kept time as we ran dark roads and parade decks.

We sang songs that taught us Marine Corps history like, “Back in 1775, my Marine Corps came alive.” And of course we sang plenty of songs about sleazy women, booze, fighting. We also sang songs about killing and dying in battle.

While it is true that I enlisted to get away, there was more to it than that. I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life, but what I did know was that I wanted to do something huge, something heroic. I wanted to get in on a big fight, to be part of an epic struggle on the side of good against evil.

Like most of the other boys I was enlisting with, I thought boot camp was the first step to a life of a warrior’s glory. My name would be remembered with mighty Achilles, and Odysseus, and Beowulf. Or at least Chesty Puller. People would write stories and songs about my heroic deeds.

That was twenty five years ago.

At our house we don’t have TV. We Netflix the TV series we want to avoid the commercials. One we liked was HBO’s Carnivale. Near the end of the second season—and, alas, the whole wonderfully creepy show—there is a great exchange between Sampson, the midget who runs the carnival, and Ben Hawkins, a gifted kid who is out to stop the evil Brother Justin. Ben will likely die on his mission.

Sampson says, “What the hell is it with you people?”

Ben says, “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” Sampson says. “You, Jesus, John the Baptist, the whole bunch of you. All fired up to throw your lives away.”

When I heard those lines, my chest filled just like it did back when I was a young idiot itching to be in battle. It seems there’s still a flicker of that old fire for heroism.

Sampson continues to berate Ben, telling him he needs to look out for himself, protect his own life, and finally Ben calls Sampson stupid, and Sampson yells in his high voice, “Stupid is dying when you don’t gotta.”

But here’s what Ben knows: nothing makes you feel alive like having a cause for which you would die. But I’m too old now to do actual battle for any reason, and anyway I’ve seen up close what dying in combat looks like and there’s no glory in it.

My wife and I also Netflixed Kyle XY to watch with the kids, on the recommendation of a friend. Kyle is a modern teenage version of Dostoyevsky’s Prince Myshkin—along with being a clone, which means he has no belly button. He’s a naïve, good-hearted kid around whom all the other characters orbit with their pathologies and neuroses, and they all need him. For his part, Kyle is obsessed with finding the truth, and doing right, no matter what it means for his own health or welfare.

Kyle XY was cut after the third season. In the special features, one of the creators describes what they had planned for the show. They were going to take it in a different direction than most TV shows of this kind; they planned on making Kyle grow into a “superhero of the soul.”

What is a superhero of the soul?

Hungarian-American writer Lawrence Dorr has a fine collection of stories called A Bearer of Divine Revelation. In the last story, “The Angel of His Presence,” an old religious man takes in his enemy, feeds him, cares for him, does not allow his own people to harm the man. He lives “in total abnegation of the self…amidst the running tide of killings and hate, praying for the peace of God for all.” He doesn’t just pray for peace for all; he lives it, loves his friends and enemies alike while war rages all around him.

Dorr gives the Russian term for this type of person: yourodivyje, literally holy fool. Nicholas of Pskov is offered as an example. Nicholas stood before Ivan the Terrible after the Czar had massacred thousands, destroyed homes and farms, and sacked monasteries. Nicholas castigated Ivan to his face and then, for emphasis, slapped a bloody piece of raw meat into his bare hand.

Talk about speaking truth to power.

Is this holy fool a superhero of the soul? Maybe not super, but I’ll at least give him hero.

Is it a personality type, someone you might admire from afar, but would rather not have in your family? Or can you grow into a hero of the soul? Do you have to seek out situations in which you will be persecuted—and possibly killed—for the truth you stand for?

Or maybe to be a hero of the soul you simply have to cultivate a habit of mind so that, unlikely as it may be here and now, if the opportunity arises you will have the strength to step into the shoes of a fool.