The Hero Inside…
When someone calls you a hero, sometimes it take a little bit to sink in…
At least, it did with me. Dorothea calls me a hero, and I could never quite fathom why. I hadn’t gone out there and saved lives, or averted disaster, or done any of those things one normally associated with the title ‘hero’. A day or two back we were roleplaying a small piece that we had been wondering about our two characters in the Dragonhunt, and such an issue came up, except the situation was reversed. Renate was being called a hero (and she had, in fact, done many actions that constitute the classical definition of a ‘Hero’), and she really couldn’t take it. She didn’t think she was a hero, and that all these people who called her one were wrong wrong wrong. She thought that becuase she didn’t have hope all the time, that becuase she didn’t always know what to do, that becuase she had faltered and failed in the past; that she was disqualified for the title of ‘Hero’. Rien pointed out to her that she was extremely wrong, and that she was more fit for the title of Hero than that world’s mythical equivilant of Hercules.
She was a Hero becuase she stood up against impossible odds and didn’t back down, becuase she would stand for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves; and, most importantly, even when everything seemed to be going to the dogs she’d carry on with her life and simply live it as well as she could. He pointed out to her that these actions were Heroic, and that Heroes are human too, and they falter on the bright path sometimes too. Heroism is all a matter of perspective. As Rien waxed lyrical on the subject I finally fully realised why Dorothea would call me a hero… because I was one.
As most of you may know, I have faced some tough obstacles this year. Dealing with my depression and my Panic Disorder, and other things cropping up, the deaths of friends so on and so forth. Dorothea would remind me that I was a hero throughout all of this, and I never quite got why until that moment. She meant precisely what Rien was saying, I was in a hole, and everything seemed huge around me, but despite that I tried to make the best of my life, and carried on, living one day at a time, doing what I had to do. I couldn’t see anything special in this at the time; I was doing what I had to do becuase, well, because I had to do it! But carrying on and doing what i had to do in the face of what seemed to be insurmountable problems is a heroic act. By that definition there everyone has a hero lurking inside them, just waiting for the right time and the right stimulus to come out and shine for the world. So, on that note, i’d like to leave you all with something that Rien said to Renate:
“We, each of us, harbour a hero inside. When that hero decides to rear their head and make themselves known who are we to deny them?”
Powered by FireStats