What would pop into your mind when
trying to find similarities between a nine year old, Hulk, Iron Man, Spiderman,
Avengers and Fantastic 4? For starters, they are all heroes. But what is a
hero? A hero is defined as “an ordinary person that can do extraordinary
things, as someone who is admired for his/her brave deeds and noble qualities”.
In case we haven’t noticed, people do significant actions every single day that
distinguish us as humans, as heroes.
So, does that mean that everyone is
a hero? Yes. I believe every single human being carries a hero inside his soul.
Sometimes, we may hide it deep inside, projecting our evil side, and other
times, situations or feelings make us act in an amazing, helpful and beneficial
way. From the smallest act, such as keeping a child away from boiling water, to
a magnificent one (such as saving a human life), makes us heroes. Our world is
filled with them, we just need to let them out.
We don’t need to wear a costume, nor
have green skin, nor super speed or have an invisibility cap. We just need one
thing as human beings: to have the will. The power of wanting to achieve
something is perhaps the strongest gift we hold as human beings. When having
the will to do something, we act, we think, we accomplish and we achieve a
reaction. We may think we don’t have this “so special will”, but we do, and we
use it all the time. When we want to go out to a party, we have the will to go
through the whole process (from being allowed to go out, to actually
assisting). When we are hungry, we have the will to stand up and cook some dish.
But, this is not the type of will
that makes us heroes. The one that makes us incredible as humans is the will to make a change. Of course, we
must know how to difference a good change between a catastrophic one (which is
easy to do if we base our decision on values such as respect, love, etc.). We must realize that an acceptable change
doesn’t mean saving an entire community from a fire, it can also be helping
someone cross the street, helping a little one reach the door knob. Those are
the type of changes that ought to be done and that are worth being done. Why
are these actions worth performing? We may think “Oh, how boring getting out of
bed to help the poor”, but as I mentioned before, the power of will always
detonates a reaction.
Sometimes, the unleashed consequences
aren’t what we expect. For example, when shutting someone’s car door, they may scream
at you, but the possibility of getting a smile as reward is possible too. In the
end, it’s not that kind of reward we are looking for, we want to achieve a non-material
one. A reaction chain of love, kindness, charity, respect and help. Perceiving
some person doing a heroic action, gives us inspiration. They motivate us to
repeat this type of action. All in all, being a hero depends on your education,
values, but that certainly doesn’t stop us of having two things clear: using the will depends only on you, and
second, there will never be bigger pleasure than that one obtained when we act
as heroes.
Sofia Bandera
