Ordinary Heroes

In my last post I said I would talk about how sometimes when we make a choice to do something that is good, something bad happens to us. The boy in the story in the previous blog was punished for helping someone because helping someone made him late for class. I believe he was a hero. That doesn't seem fair to be a hero and have a bad consequence. When our children were growing up we had this conversation all the time about what is fair and what isn't and why, etc. etc. The quote I chose from "A World Without Heroes" talks about heroes who made the right choice, but had bad things happen to them.
"My final hero tells us that life can be what it should be. It is a person who does not fit the heroic mold at all, and from whom, perhaps, we should least expect great or heroic deeds. This hero has been with us all along, and discharges his duty without giving a second thought to fashionable theories of the times It could be anybody. It could be you. 'Ordinary' people do heroic things every day that are simply unthinkable to the anti-hero conception of lie. And we all know it. How else would we recognize Mother Teresa as a saint? J.R.R. Tolkien understood our extraordinary powers well in creating the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Hobbits, he said, 'are made small...mostly to show up, in creatures of very small physical power, the amazing and unexpected heroism of ordinary men 'at a pinch.' "
"My witness could be Lenny Skutnik. He may be the best known of my 'ordinary' heroes because his heroism-indeed 'amazing and unexpected'- was shown on television. You remember: the man who dove into the icy Potomac to rescue a survivor of an airplane crash a few years ago. It could be the man in that same crash who gave his life to be sure that rescuers picked up all the other survivors first. It could be the small boy who saved his father's life by lifting an automobile under which the man was pinned and dying. I think of the three-year-old who, instead of fleeing, went upstairs in a burning house to wake and save his mother. The young football pro who went to the aid of youngsters floundering in a gravel pit, knowing full well he himself could barely swim. He drowned. The paperboy who braved an inferno to lead an elderly woman to safety. He survived, but suffered serious burns."
All heroes have to make a choice between helping others or thinking of themselves. Those mentioned in the paragraph above all chose to help others. The boy in the story in my last blog chose to help. He knew he would be late, but he chose to help.
That is what my "Little Hero Hugs" are all about. I want to help parents to teach their children that they can be heroes at home. They get praise and are able to wear their "Hug" when they choose to help in their home, or wherever they are really. If we could grow a generation of children that choose to help others and think of others before themselves, we would soon have grown men and women who are heroes. There is no telling what changes for good can come from a generation full of heroes!