Heroes Essay

HEROES ESSAY What is a hero? To you, the reader, I submit this question so that you may form your own opinion. What is a hero and what qualifications make he or she worthy of the title? The reply you have formulated in your mind has probably come to you rapidly and with alacrity, so much that you may deem even asking such a simple question to be not only a waste of the time it took me to ask it, but also the time it took you to consider it. Did you think of some virtuous individual who rescues people, putting life and limb on the line to do others help and fight the evils of the world? Did Hercules of ancient Greek mythology and Superman and Spiderman of modern times come into your mind's eye? Did a police officer, a fire fighter, or some hero of war enter your brain? If they did and they make up your answer, then, from a certain perspective, you are correct. However, if such characters were all that you thought of, then you are also indisputably very, very wrong. It is certainly acceptable to look upon such people as heroes, but not expanding the horizons of the word also suggests a lack of scope or vision. Such people fit a dictionary's description of "hero", but in defining this word, one finds the dictionary falls short of the obligation of properly defining it. Everyone can be, and probably is, a hero. Even the person who is reading these words now is more likely than not worthy of this distinction and if they are not, then they inevitably will be. A hero is anyone who has forgotten themselves for another or anyone who has been positively influential in the life of another, for having done a deed that has consequences of a beneficial nature makes one a hero in the eyes of the one they helped. The grandness of the deeds one does to become a hero and the number of people one serves as a hero for is irrelevant, for one is a hero nonetheless. No one life can with any validity be judged more important than another and, therefor, the heroes who influenced that life