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• Thursday, April 19, 2007 07:29 AM

  So you want to be a hero?

  Hero is in the eye of the beholder, pal. Yes, heroes enter flaming buildings while everyone else is running out, rescue damsels from evil wizards, hunt down the outlaws, clean up the town or fight good fights against terrible odds and sometimes even prevail in the end.

  But that's mainly the adolescent bullshit view of heroism that most of us never touch except in daydreams. Why? Because most of us are busy just getting out of bed every morning to go to a job that's barely tolerable so we can put food in our kids' bellies or keep a roof over their heads. Or loving and being true. Or teaching those kids to grow into strong, honorable and trustworthy adults. Or doing any of a million mundane daily chores that mean so much and are taken so much for granted by the ones we love (including even ourselves) and that, added up in the end, are the sum total of a life well-lived and glorious.

  There's a quote from Charles Bronson's character in the Magnificent Seven which comes to mind:

  "You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there's nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee anything will ever come of it. This is bravery."

  You want to be a hero, pal? You want your name to live on after you? You want to be remembered and revered?

  Then marry that "good woman" and have some children and love them, one and all. Be a good, kind, decent, responsible human being in the face of all the odds and impediments.

  Because perhaps, in the final analysis, the best, bravest and penultimate heroes are the unsung ones. The ones who acted out of love, courage and self-sacrifice and not for the sake of some ephemeral, illusive, egotistical quest for immortality.

  —pubius maximus Read pubius maximus's other letters
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