Being Heroic

Choosing Our Heroes

“I was talking recently with a friend...and he said that to him the hero is someone who has endured life's trials and tribulations. When pressed, he explained he meant something more than that. Heroes...not only endure hardships, they maintain their love of life, their courage, and their capacity to care for others. No matter how much suffering they experience, they do not pass it on to others. They absorb it and declare: Suffering stops here.”

                               Carol S. Pearson (The Hero Within)

I watched a clip on the news last night about a young man who stopped and took the shirt off his back to staunch the bleeding of a man, a total stranger, who'd been gravely wounded by the bombs at the Boston Marathon. Once the wounded man, now an amputee, had stabilized, his first request was to find the man who'd saved his life. The interview took place at his hospital bedside. Because of the accident, these two men bonded and became family to one another. The wounded man planned to attend the young man's college graduation in a few weeks. Which of these men would be considered the hero?

I just want to say that suffering alone does not a hero make. Nor does surviving suffering, nor entering into the suffering of another, nor choosing a lifestyle of suffering. Certainly, being good at football, rock music or wrestling, does not make one hero-worthy. We should choose our heroes carefully, I believe, based upon how they live their lives. Life itself brings “ten-thousand joys and ten-thousand sorrows,” to paraphrase the Buddha. We will all experience suffering if we live long enough. Not all of us will be heroic about it.

Being a hero requires determination to not become embittered by the random suffering that life brings. It requires that we not see our own adversity as somehow different and more terrible than that of anyone else. Being a hero requires that we continue to live in love regardless of the circumstances that come our way. People who can do that are, by their very nature, heroic.

The young man in Boston was unusually brave in that his first concern was not for his own safety, but to help another. The wounded man became a hero because his loss of a leg did not keep him from the joy of friendship and mutual regard. Adversity sometimes brings out the very best in human nature. I wonder, who are your heroes?

                                                   In the spirit,

                                                       Jane