Here’s to the Heroes

I want to begin with a story. It’s a story about an ordinary hero. She doesn’t have any heroic insignia: no cape, no “S” for super on her outfit, no telephone booth to change in. But she has more than enough heroism to sink a boat with; better said, to save a boat with.

A hero, if you boil the word down to its essence, is a person capable of sacrificing his or her individual good for the sake of another. It’s not about looks or costumes. It’s about actions, and about the love that goes into them.

So, to introduce you to my hero: it’s an ordinary day, on an ordinary street, in an ordinary household. A little boy pushes open the back door, dumps his backpack on the kitchen floor and runs up the flight of stairs to his bedroom. His mother follows him with the backpack (as he was hoping she would). She pushes open the door, and finds her son lying face down on the bed.

“Gareth?” she says.
He doesn’t move.
“Leave me alone,” he says, through the blanket. His voice is congested with tears.
“What happened at school?”
“Nothing.”
“On the bus?”
“Nothing.”

His mother sits down beside him on the bed. She waits. It takes a while for him to put his head up and tell her what happened at school and cry it out on her shoulder. She tells him that bullies are really the scaredy-cats, not him, because they’re scared of facing up to other people. She gives him a kiss, and tells him it will be better tomorrow. He believes her; she’s his mother. She’s always right. The woman goes back to getting dinner ready and checking homework from her students.

Then her daughter comes home from training. She’s tired, grumpy, and ready to pick a fight. The moment she steps in the door, she’s nagging her mother about “that party that you won’t let me go to because you don’t trust me…” Her mother has explained ten times that it’s not because she doesn’t trust her but because it’s not sensible to throw yourself into a situation where others are doing something that you don’t want to do. This time, she listens, swallows her impatience, and smiles at her daughter.

Her husband comes home, they get dinner on the table, she loses her temper with her little boy because he’s playing with his food and then feels frustrated with herself, a friend calls to ask her for a favour with her daughter’s carpool that means that she’s going to have to get up earlier tomorrow, she gets her little boy to bed, has her husband phone Gareth’s teacher to tell him about the bullying, helps her daughter with a project for school and points out a beauty tip in a magazine to her (her daughter rolls her eyes) and then she sits down with her husband to talk, and then she finishes marking homework. It’s an ordinary day. She’d tell me about her afternoon without thinking that there was anything heroic about it. But she’s still a hero. Because if actions done with love and sacrifice for the sake of others are a recipe for heroism, she’s put all the ingredients in.

I believe that there are many ordinary heroes, so many that sometimes we don’t even recognise them, because we are looking for the supermen and wonderwomen of this world. We are looking for people who achieve great things, make a lot of money, and above all, look good in tight spandex pants.

But heroism is much simpler than we think. We can all be heroes, if we take up the challenge of our everyday life and our relationships with others, and throw all our dedication and love into it.