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by the way the word Hero has been thrown around really loosely since 9/11. I heard a lot of people unthinkingly refer to all the victims from that attack as heroes. Some where, no doubt, the ones who kept a cool head and tried their best to help the people around them, but I would say that majority of the people who died on 9/11 were not really heroes, but just regular people in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I think a real Hero is someone who does amazing things and gives people hope, who does the right thing at a time when the wrong thing was a lot easier to do, who speaks truth to a corrupt power, who saves lives, who opposes tyrants, who is brave and acts when others are too afraid, who sets the bar just a little bit higher and demands and inspires better from the people around them.
In WWII, my grandfather volunteered over an over again for missions that were considered suicide. He survived every single one -that is Heroic. So I am sure there are plenty of heroes being created by this unheroic war -ironically, I am sure, many men are becoming heroes not by fighting, but by showing restraint and saving innocent lives -you see, sometimes a hero is a hero, not because he fights, but because he chooses not to fight, when it is for the greater good that he not.
I really think that the word 'hero' has been cheapened in the last few years, by means of misguided patriotic propaganda. I don't think every single person who signs up for the military is necessarily a hero -they are brave and conscious of duty on a level that approaches heroism -and at the risk of sounding calloused, I don't believe you become a hero just by losing your life in battle, but I think the true heroes are the ones who go far beyond what was expected, who accomplish things that should have been beyond the reach of a mere mortal.
T.E. Lawrence did that. So did Che Guevara. So did Beethoven, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Christ.
when politicians cheapen the word, and throw it out every time they want to make a patriotic sounding speech, they make it harder for people to realize that there were, in fact, men and women who pushed back the boundaries of human capacity in ernest, who accomplished and inspired godlike achievements.
We cannot lose this incredibly important Mythos and Archetype. It is the tiny kernel of hope inside all of us when we stand before an seemingly impossible task that also just happens to be the right and just thing to do. We look up into the pantheon of stars and see a deaf man writing the most beautiful music ever, an asthmatic fighting victoriously in a balmy climate that should have killed him, or a gentle, benign, emaciated man bringing an entire empire to it's knees.
We look up and say, "It can be done: nothing is impossible."
That is the potency of the Hero -and we cannot let the politicians destroy that.
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