How do you know a hero?
How will you be able to tell?
The David Crosby song "Hero" is an amazing song, one that touches me very deeply. David wrote it upon his release from jail after serving a prison drug sentence. The song is about shades of grey in concepts of right and wrong. It's about a human locked in a cage for behavior that hurt no one. The cover art for the single is an abstract painting of a valiant knight, shield and sword in hand. The knight's head is disproportionately teeny, however. The message is that many "heroes" must be blessed with limited intelligence. To be a hero, to fight the good fight, to commit yourself thoroughly to a sacred cause...often requires the ability to not see all sides of an issue.
The idea of being a hero has always been sacred to me. Of being and doing good, of championing truth, and the weak...to be and do these things, not for glory, but quietly...for me a hero simply does what must be done.
I'm a bit of a romantic. The idea of a brave soul doing a good deed which no one witnesses (or perhaps it only seemed unseen, but years later a single stray witness returns to save the life of the doomed hero...), such romantic notions are a huge part of who i am.
But being a hero of intelligence in a world as complex as the one we share...to have a far-reaching mind that strives to see all truths...and to have a mind that races ahead, dreaming of a better world, a better day...to be this kind of hero is sometimes to be no "hero" at all, in many people's eyes. For each of us can only process what a hero is through the limitations of our own tiny experience. And most minds are not far-reaching.
Will you have the eyes to know a hero when she or he walks across your path?
Will you have the courage and understanding to be a hero yourself, even if to do so opens you to ridicule or scorn from those you would help and lift up?
It was one of those great stories, that you can't put down at night...
1 comment:
I come from the older school of thought on heroism, when immodesty was one of the key heroic characteristics and recognition was the most crucial element of heroism. Give me Odysseus, Hector, Perseus, Lancelot or Alexander the Great.
Back then it didn't matter whether you had a large or small head. So long as you did great, important deeds you were a hero. Hercules and Achilles were meat heads. Odysseus and Alexander were brilliantly clever. They applied their minds not to philosophy, but to helping their friends, fighting for their country and elevating themselves to glory. That's my definition of heroism. I think Christian thinkers and moralists have abused the word into the form you now use.
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