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Once I heard someone speaking to me in those dimensions we sometimes pass through in our deepest dreams, out of the cypress and pine foothills of Olympus. "Heroes," she said, "are those who adventure beyond horizons, who toil there against the greatest of odds to win the greatest victories, then journey back home to tell us of their triumphs." In my dream she spoke calmly as if any or all of us could be heroic if we'd follow the path, remembering who and what we are.
Foggily asking, "Where can I sign up? What are my odds? Who must I defeat?" The sensation shifted and I awoke in the comfort and safety of my own bed as the rosy-fingered dawn cracked light across the room. It was so real I've often thought of that moment, fixed in time. The idea of heroic behavior has always been a sucker punch for me since, for whatever reason, history and future are inexorably connected. Reading the accounts of modern day Navy Seals or darting back into Kipling, heroism and people who achieve it are spell-binding. What are the steps to hero-hood; are we required to walk around with lightning bolts in each hand? Or, are some everyday people destined to cross the shadowy line of triumph and tragedy, merely doing "what's right." Did Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger exist through time, once a Roman Legionnaire, or was he just a pilot who flash-decided a landing on the Hudson could save his airplane full of people?
The truth is probably equidistant between two extremes. The very definition of a hero is too simple to be complicated; and too complicated to be simple because interpretation gets in the way. If only we knew with certainty, we'd probably rest on the contention that each of us has the power to do great things, to rise above our previous best at a given moment in time and space. And those who may never experience a shining moment fail to do so, not because they aren't equipped, but instead because they weren't programmed years earlier to grant themselves permission to subconsciously apply for "greatness" however it might be defined.
Confused? It's understandable, welcome to the club. Iconic General Patton believed in reincarnation: Through the travail of ages, midst the pomp and toil of war, I have fought and strove and perished, countless times upon this star. In the forms of many people and all panoplies of time, have I seen the luring vision of the Victory Maid sublime.
Yet contemporary General Norman Schwarzkoph, hero of Gulf War one, took a different path: "It doesn't take a hero."
Today, tomorrow, a year from Tuesday, perhaps it's simply a question of trying to do the right thing when others won't; Frost's The Road Not Taken if you will. These are times in which heroes are sorely needed. You almost certainly have the right stuff, if only you recognize it.
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