Big Hero
When I was 13 I had just moved to a new town all the way across the country. My first day of Junior High I saw her. The most beautiful girl in school. She was a vision, a beauty, a mystery. I had a crush on her from 7th to 9th grade. I had recurring dream during that time of us being in a bus crash and me being the hero that saved her and helped her afterwards. I thought that is what it would have taken to get her to admire me, to look up to me, to fall in love with me. That is what being a hero meant to me.
Small Hero
Fast forward many decades. Facebook is reconnecting everyone from back in the day. And who should eventually be on it but her. I friend her, she friends me, but she isn’t on very often and we don’t actually talk or connect until one day I posted something about me participating in a control study for the aviation industry. I had to stay for 20 hours in a hyperbaric chamber as part of a test.
She saw my post and wrote to me asking me if I could connect her with the director of the organization I did the study with because she was writing an article on that topic. And so I made the introduction and she got her interview. She was very appreciative.
Practice Heroism
That is what being a hero means to me now. And that means I have moved from the fantasy, extraordinary effort definition of heroism to the real life, helping people definition. That doesn’t mean the first definition doesn’t exist, it does and is extraordinary. But most of daily life is not in that realm. If we wait for the extraordinary event for us to exhibit effort on behalf of another then we have no heroic muscle memory. Heroism is made up of thousands of small acts of kindness and love. Those are the practice runs that allow you to complete the race when it arrives.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman | Napkindad.com
Quote by Edward Howe