the context of time

  When we are our own heroes, there are no heroes. Something I bemoan a great deal in the last few years is how few understand that. Everyone is a hero. Every veteran, every police officer, first responder, or survivor of any disease or calamity. Every mother, father, aunt, uncle, friend, or casual acquaintance, heroes one and all. The result being, there are no heroes anymore! You don't think so, name one, just one today that everyone would agree is a genuine hero. Any one name come to mind? I didn't think so. I certainly can't think of any I would call a hero. I'm a veteran myself, served twenty years, but I'm no hero, not even close. I barely qualify for an honorable mention. I get annoyed when others attempt to convince me otherwise. Yes, it's flattering but I see it as virtue signaling on another level. Equivalent to those that say they wanted to serve but just couldn't, although they were world class athletes while in college. I've heard just about every reason imaginable, except for one, I didn't want to. 

 When I was growing up heroes were different from you and I, that's what made them heroic. In almost all cases we knew very little about the person or character beyond whatever heroic deed they had performed. They just didn't have any faults at all, that was the perception. I'd say that perception has certainly changed dramatically over the last few decades or so. And yes, I'm old enough to talk in decades. Been around long enough to miss things how they used to be. The excitement of the new has definitely worn off. You might say I've found my comfort zone, and it isn't today. Heroes of the past being disparaged as nothing but vile men and women, their memorials and memories erased. They are judged today for yesterday's actions.  There is no context of time with any of that. 

  Who do you hear being hailed as heroes? Men dressed as women reading books in the library to children. Men identifying as women competing in women's sports and becoming champions? Heroes? Anyone that chooses to buck any and all social convention, that chooses to offend others, to be "different" is now a hero. Well, that's what I hear all the time, along with everyone else who goes to work and does a job, they're heroes. It's part of the job description, hero. The truth is that is part of the problem today, we don't have heroes. It's rather an ironic thing if you really think about it. In years past we had our heroes, those that we all admired and wished we could be like. Any faults or flaws those heroes actually possessed were overlooked, set aside in the glow of their accomplishment. It was a bit of fantasy, the image of a hero. Today we entertain all sorts of fantasies and call those supporting them heroic. They are just like us. We're all heroes. 

 Mark Twain had this to say: “Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely, we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire; we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.”

  It seems to me we spend more time exposing the faults in others than in examining ourselves. I'm ok, is the newest release on the best sellers list. Equality is the watchword. When everyone is a hero, there is no need to admire anyone else. And you know that's the thing about heroes. Heroes are what we wish we were. It doesn't take a lot of courage to follow the crowd, to join the mob. Heroes are made by the choices they make, not by what is popular at the moment. Being a hero isn't something you choose to do; it isn't anything you have a choice about. Heroes respond to the moment, even when that moment may last a lifetime. We need heroes to avoid being lost in obscurity. Today, more than ever. 

Randy Travis said it this way:  Your heroes will help you find good in yourself

                                                  Your friends won't forsake you for somebody else
                                                   They'll both stand beside you thru thick and thru thin
                                                   And that's how it goes with heroes and friends
                                                   And that's how it goes with heroes and friends

Today we make a list of friends based on what heroes they dismiss. That's the way it goes on Facebook and Twitter. A sad state of affairs I'd say. We need a hero. Just as sadly I just don't see anyone stepping up. But then again that's another thing about heroes, you never see them coming. You only admire them after the fact.