Note to Reader: This is an article from December 5, 2012.
I want to begin this missive with a dictionary definition, if you don’t mind.
Hero: A person . . . who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.
In today’s America, that definition has, unfortunately, come to include anyone and everyone who simply joins the military, just because they join the military.
No other requirements.
Just put the uniform on and, “VIOLA!” … you’re a “hero”. That really chaps my ass.
Sorry, folks, but in similar fashion to many of my contemporaries, I did my time in uniforms; Navy and Army, as a matter of fact. Neither set of togs made me a hero. Not even close.
Somehow the meaning of the word got changed, and in a very cynical, political way.
Thanks to word necromancers like Frank “Job Creators” Luntz, (not to mention many other conservative ideologues), all sorts of good and valuable words have lost their intrinsic meaning. (A closely related phenomenon is the wearing of a flag lapel pin, or slapping a decal on your car’s bumper to demonstrate one’s patriotism. What does patriotism mean? It means wearing a lapel pin or sticking something to your car. Jeez.)
In other words, true meanings — the very guts of what is commonly understood about words — have been bastardized to facilitate ulterior, political motives and goals.
For Someone Else
I want to direct my comments to the actual sense or essence of what hero means. The definition mentions courage, and I suspect we’d all agree that courage means the ability to do something in spite of our fear. I’d like to add one little bit beyond that, just for clarification. When I think of someone demonstrating courage, I think of that person doing something for someone else, in spite of fear. For someone else. When you have nothing to gain, everything to lose, you’re scared shitless, but you still do something for someone else. That’s courage.
Police and fire departments are filled with past, present and future heroes. (Not everybody who wears a police or firefighter’s uniform is a hero, of course, but odds are pretty good you’ll find a few among their ranks.) I don’t intend to demean other jobs or careers, but when it comes to demonstrations of courage, cops and firefighters have more potential opportunities than most other occupations. That’s because cops and firefighters are in place to provide protection, and they’re trained and expected to move toward danger. That’s their job. And for some, it’s their character as well. The important thing is, they are trained, and at some point that training becomes a subliminal program that’s always running in the background. They don’t think about it, but it’s always there, ready to take over when needed.
I can’t think of better examples of courage than the actions of first responders when the Twin Towers were attacked. Aside from the intrinsic demands of their character, those men and women had nothing personal to gain, everything to lose, but they still ran to the core of the danger. They overcame their fear in an attempt to do something good and merciful for someone else. When the alarms sounded, that background program immediately pushed its way to the front and took control.
When danger comes calling, it’s good to have a prospective hero nearby. You never know who it might be. For that matter, the forthcoming hero usually has no idea either. Something just happens and the former non-hero quells their own fear and does the right thing at the right time. That’s how non-heroes become heroes. That’s why we have the word; to describe the person who does something like that.
My Point
A 58 year-old man was pushed off a subway platform yesterday in New York City. The fact that he was pushed, intentionally, isn’t the point of this little article. (Let it suffice, that act was a cold , cruel and cowardly act of murder.) The point is that the platform was fairly crowded, and at least 30 seconds elapsed between the time the man landed on the rails, and the moment — as the man frantically attempted to climb out of harm’s way — when the train arrived.
But no one helped. Nobody ran over to help pull him out of the way. To be sure, there were plenty of subliminal programs running in the background in the minds of all those people standing on the platform, but nobody was running the program that could help.
I truly understand, no one can honestly or accurately say what they would or would not do at a time like that, when seconds count and life or death may result from your immediate decision.
But it is a mortal, wretched and heartbreaking sadness that, among all the people standing there on the platform, no hero could be found.
