Heroes On My Mind!

Challenges on every side, stress and turmoil! Don’t we feel like we’d like to find someplace to hide? Don’t we know that has never worked to solve our problems? Don’t we need leaders  who will resist those urges to run away, choosing to fight rather than take flight? Can we find the hero in ourselves who can swallow fears and do the right thing? Are we made of sterner stuff when the time comes to resist instead of continuing to submit?

Isn’t this about choosing the kind of lives we hope to lead? Don’t we face these kinds of challenges wherever, whenever we are in our lives? In small ways and in big ways, all of us have to make decisions about next steps, today and tomorrow. These may seem like small things at the time, but they add up. They determine the direction we are going. The choices we are making, in the end, dictate where we all end up.

The beauty of being alive is that we have the freedom of action to change course when we decide to do that. Sometimes that will take a lot of courage. It means telling many people who are expecting we will continue on the course we have been following that we have changed our mind. We could face disappointment, anger and opposition. Only heroes will have the strength to persist. Yet, sometimes the wisest thing is to cut and run to escape from the path we have been on that is no longer the one for us.

Can you review your past, the times in your lives when you have done just that, should have done just that? What did you do? Did you change direction, or did you live to regret it? Is there joy or sadness at the heart of your darkness? I can mark those times in my life and it is a mixture of both. We have to live with the verdict from which there is no escape.

My fantasies, born of my readings of fairy tales, accounts of historical events, and science fiction epics, contaminated my psyche with aspirations toward sacrifice and heroism. The bald truth is that life normally does not appear to be like that. We strive to selfishly to do the best for ourselves, with after-thoughts for the welfare of others.

Only when we examine the length and breadth of our tenure might we discern the shape of the heroic role we have played in our lives and in the lives of others. The publicly lionized hero appears on our resume only rarely. But the one of the daily grind, often, is only recognized in obituaries.

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