My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made
mistakes, but recovered from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0– – – Bono<\/p>\n
I once saw a Dustin Hoffman movie\u00a0called \u201cHero.\u201d He played a man who performed the first selfless gesture of his\u00a0life when he reluctantly helped save injured passengers from a roadside plane
crash. Then he disappeared.<\/p>\n
What I liked most about the movie\u00a0was the way they depicted him. He didn\u2019t have a big S on his shirt and fly\u00a0through the air. He didn\u2019t wear an iron suit that gave him superhuman physical\u00a0strength and energy. He didn\u2019t have the ability to cling to the sides of\u00a0buildings. He didn\u2019t even have the urge to help people. He just happened to be
at the site at the time of the crash and he did what was necessary. All the\u00a0while, he was annoyed by the whole thing and when he was done, he didn\u2019t wait\u00a0around for kudos. He just walked away, glad that it was over.<\/p>\n
Before Covid, I used to do strength\u00a0and agility sessions with a trainer who conducted his workout sessions in a gym\u00a0for elite female athletes. My exercises were mild as I watched in awe as the girls
performed lunges on the balance beam and tried to do a graceful dismount\u00a0without injuring themselves. They walked on their hands, they spun around on\u00a0the uneven bars, pushed off the vault and did multiple back flips. During my\u00a0sessions, any time I felt tired or bored, all I had to do was look up and see\u00a0someone flying through the air.<\/p>\n
These girls looked like heroines,\u00a0they were, but one day, my coach told me, \u201cThe training you\u2019re doing at this\u00a0stage in your life is every bit as powerful as the girls who are training for the\u00a0Olympics. You are just as much of a hero as they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
We aren\u2019t gold medal winners unless\u00a0one of you is reading this blog, but many of us are gifted in a quieter way.\u00a0The sister of a friend is the family breadwinner, working and taking care of\u00a0her autistic son. A man I know helps people die. Another friend writes books\u00a0and offers people a way to maneuver grief. I know someone whose entire family\u00a0is battling cancer and heart disease and she manages to laugh whenever we\u00a0speak. I knew someone else is no longer with us who lost her legs to frostbite\u00a0and she powered around on prosthetics like nothing had happened. These are all\u00a0heroic acts and the list goes on.<\/p>\n
When I was a professional ballet\u00a0dancer, twirling and jumping on the tips of my toes was extraordinary as I\u00a0showed up for class every morning, went on ten-week, one-night stand bus tours\u00a0across the country and performed on blisters and sprains. That was heroic, even\u00a0though I didn\u2019t know it at the time.<\/p>\n
If you look deep inside, there is a\u00a0hero living there, even if you can’t see him or her. It doesn\u2019t matter what you\u00a0pull off, you can feel that power emerge. You don’t have to be an athlete, a\u00a0power ranger or a ninja. You don\u2019t have to be publicly celebrated. Most likely,\u00a0your greatest accomplishments are not so dramatic but they mean as much. Maybe\u00a0you’re extremely compassionate with other people. Maybe you can listen so well,\u00a0it heals someone. Maybe you\u2019re raising children. Maybe you feed hungry people\u00a0or you have an extraordinary ability to make people laugh in the toughest of circumstances\u00a0like my friend, Rhoni, who excels in both. These are the everyday deeds that\u00a0take stamina to pull off. If you help one other person to find the strength to be\u00a0themselves, you\u2019ve done your part.<\/p>\n
It takes a commitment to finding courage\u00a0and never giving up. Today, we are all heroes for withstanding the madness of\u00a0the political machinations that are happening. We can either roll up in a ball\u00a0on the floor and weep or we can stand in the light and do what we can to make\u00a0changes. No matter how dim it is, it\u2019s always there and it takes stamina to remember\u00a0that.<\/p>\n
An Aesop\u2019s fable:<\/p>\n
A lion was asleep in the forest\u00a0when a mouse came walking by and inadvertently ran across the lion\u2019s nose. The\u00a0lion laid his huge paw on the tiny creature, ready to kill her. The mouse\u00a0promised to repay the lion if he would let her go. The lion was amused that the\u00a0mouse thought she could ever help him in any way but in an act of kindness, he\u00a0let her go.<\/p>\n
Some days later, the lion got\u00a0caught a hunter\u2019s net. He filled the forest with angry roaring and the mouse heard\u00a0him. She ran to him and although she was afraid the hunter would see her and kill\u00a0her, she gnawed on the rope and set the lion free. She proved that even a mouse\u00a0can find the courage to help a lion.<\/p>\n
I love the following quote from\u00a0Hercules:<\/p>\n
\u201cA true hero isn\u2019t measured by the\u00a0size of his strength, but rather by the strength of his heart.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who mademistakes, but recovered from them.\u00a0 \u00a0– – – Bono I once saw a Dustin Hoffman movie\u00a0called \u201cHero.\u201d He played a man who performed the first selfless gesture of his\u00a0life when he reluctantly helped save injured passengers from a roadside planecrash. Then he disappeared. What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2700,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699\/revisions\/2700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}