Were You A Hero Today?
Leahcim Semaj, Ph.D. - Change Agent

We celebrate National Heroes. This is good and necessary. It helps to focus our collective consciousness around a common set of values. Heroes are often ordinary people who decided to do extraordinary things. An Akan saying reminds us that it is only a child or an imbecile that is expected to have narrow sense of self. As you mature, your ‘self’ should continue to expand like concentric circles; from individual to family, to tribe, to clan, to nation, to world. When nations are governed by persons with underdeveloped selves, the people suffer.

The Politician As Hero
It is a cop out when the Prime Ministers calls for two days of prayer to help solve the wave of political violence now washing over our land. Prayers in this situation are usually an act of desperation by someone who is powerless to do anything else to alleviate the situation. This Prime Minister has the authority and the power to summon all the resources of the state to bring a permanent end to this scourge on our land. What he lacks is the will. If he desires to be a hero he will break with the tribal past and accept that we are now experiencing our version of Ground-Level-Zero. To the people of New York, Rudolph Guliani is a hero. To the people of The United States, George “Bubla” Bush is now a hero. In both cases they rose to the occasion and provided the response that the people needed to ease the pain from the tragedy of September 11, 2001. The result has been that the nation has forgotten their shortcomings and is now seeing them in a new light.

Butch Stewart and John Issa are heroes. They have risen to the occasion to put nation before narrow self-interest. The result has been a feeling of excitement at the potential that can now be realized with these two creative corporate giants on the same team, Team Jamaica. Do you have what it takes to be a hero?

Who is A Hero?
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming.
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
    Helen Keller

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
    Alfred North Whitehead

Man's greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields that have their heroes - obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes.
    Victor Hugo

Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed, but win out in the end because they've stayed true to their ideals and beliefs and commitments.
    Actor Kevin Costner

That's what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end.
Lise Hand, describing Irish journalist Veronica Guerin, who was killed as a result of her investigation of Irish organized crime.

A hero is a man who does what he can
    Roman Rollard

There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage to the sun.
    Sir Thomas Brown (1830-79), English physician and writer

The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be common, nor the common heroic.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson

The hero is the one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light.
    Felix Adler

To dream the impossible dream, To fight the unbeatable foe, To bear with unbearable sorrow, To run where the brave dare not go. To right the unrightable wrong, To love pure and chaste from afar, To try when your arms are too weary, To reach the unreachable star!
From the song

Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.
    Benjamin Disraeli

This life we have is short, so let us leave a mark for people to remember.
Kip Keino, Kenyan Olympic gold medallist in track, explaining why he adopted and educated 69 orphan children.