Everyday Canvas

Heroes

Prompt: Joseph Campbell said: "A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself."
What do you think makes someone into a hero?

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I agree with Joseph Campbell. It is a valiant undertaking to decide to tackle something bigger than oneself, in other words, to at least attempt to do something about an issue no matter how undoable it seems.

In addition to undertaking huge and sometimes insurmountable projects, a hero is someone who displays courage and resilience when faced with a problem or a hardship. A hero will also rise to the situation when someone needs help or needs to be saved from a dangerous situation. There are heroes in uniform and there are heroes in civilian clothing. What makes a person a hero comes from inside him or her and shows in their actions.

Heroes are people like us and most of the time they are scared, too. Their heroism, however, doesn’t let fear get the best of them. Nor do the real heroes wish to do anything for fame and fortune. If they did, that would cheapen their deeds. A hero performs with the recognition of risk and cost and predictable sacrifice but without the anticipation of external gain.

Why do heroes become heroes? This is a puzzle. It could be that there is a hero gene or the love hormone in the brain, which increases the likelihood of altruism, or it could be just that heroes feel more empathy and compassion to perform heroic deeds in service to others in need, be it for a person, persons, group, country, a moral cause, or ideal. In short, no recipe exists for creating heroes because heroes just are heroes or they become heroes in a variety of quiet ways whether we recognize them or not.