How to be a Hero
You are a good person and you want to do good in your community. You roam the streets looking for a white kitten sitting on the windowsill of a house ablaze with fire. You look for such a kitten because you want to rescue it. That is what good people do. Heck, you can even see yourself going inside again and returning with a noble but distressed maiden in your arms, one that aside from being noble and distressed is now also forever grateful that you saved her life. The media will arrive on the scene and you will decline their request to take your picture and then cave in, just because you know it will inspire the readers. You are that good.
I myself have been scouting our community for burning houses with white kittens and noble maidens in distress. But dammit, they are not as common as one would expect and the Fire Services here in Surrey are very good. They would probably beat me to it, should I find one. Distressed kittens and maidens in burning houses is not as common as one might think.
This all made me think. What else can I do that would really be good for the community around me? I cannot deny it; maybe it is because I read to many Superman cartoons when I was a boy, but I want to be a hero. I want to do things that saves and help people…and even kittens. I also want to be a follower of Jesus. So, I scanned the Bible for tips and suggestion on how I can live up to my heroic aspirations. I was somewhat disappointed…
Yes, there are these heroic stories in the Bible. David sleighing Goliath. Daniel being thrown into the lion’s den and his friends in an oven (there was no kitten though, just an angel).
But if you take a closer look, the real heroes in the Bible doesn’t seem to be only the guys that did these once off, saving-a-noble-but-distressed-maiden kind of things. It is people who did much smaller things and did them repeatedly, as a matter of habit. I also discovered that even the guys that did do the saving-a-noble-but-distressed kind of things, did them because the smaller, repetitive good things they did which prepared them to be the kind of persons that can rise heroic to burning house kind of occasions. David for instance, had a habit of worshipping God through music and poetry before he took on Goliath and Daniel prayed long before you got thrown in the lion’s den for it.
aaThis all changed me. I no longer look out for kittens or maidens in distress. I look for smaller good things that I can do repeatedly. May I suggest to you one such thing. Its called promise making and promise keeping. A promise is a commitment. You make a commitment to someone, but you make it with or by yourself. I think it is often not necessary to tell people about the commitments you make to them but it is important to make them with or to yourself. And then you should keep them. To honor a commitment and do that habitually is a very heroic thing. It might even do more for a community than saving a noble and distressed maiden from a burning building. The simplest commitment kept, like checking in with a friend or greeting the person at the checkout friendly and by name, injects life and wellbeing in a community in a way that is difficult to quantify or attract media attention to.
Honoring commitments might not bring you fame but it gradually makes you and others into the kind of person that can rise to an occasion where exceptional heroism is required. Just do it. Make commitments and keep them. Or as Kirsten Dunst told Peter Parker: “Go get them Tiger!”