I'm A Hero!!

..........by today's standards anyway. Watching the news, I saw a story about a dog dialing 911 when his owner collapsed, so of course, they're calling the dog a hero.
A man uses the Heimlich maneuver to save a fellow diner....a hero.
A passerby uses CPR to save a heart attack victim.....hero.
Not one of the people are heroes, they're just doing what a fellow human should be doing in a given situation. Maybe my standards are a bit too high. Maybe I expect too much from a person before I paste that label on them. If you see smoke coming out of a window in the middle of the night, beat on the door to wake the people inside, are you a hero? No. If the house was fully consumed and you ran inside to pull a person to safety, are you a hero? Yes. My standard for that hero badge is this: You go in to an extremely dangerous situation, knowing you're probably not going to make it out, but do it anyway Or you give your own life to save others. It's that simple.

Why do we throw that phrase around so much? Why are we awarding that status to every person who goes out of their way to help another, when, as human beings, it's no more than what we should be doing to begin with? Should we really be giving the same honor to a person using the Heimlich, that we give to the soldier that threw themselves on a grenade to save his unit? The fireman who ran into an fully engulfed building to save a life?

...............me? What did I do to be a hero? Oh. My kid got a splinter. Big one, hurt like hell. Didn't even take them to the ER, pulled it out myself!

Isn't a Hero some sort of a sandwich? A good samaritan is a person who helps others in need. If I help someone in trouble, I don't expect to be called a hero. A thank you is always welcome though. My response is usually "no problem" if they thank me. I quit saying "Any time"....it seems that they would do the same risky thing over and over when I said that.

When my kid was 3 yrs old she watched a show called higgly town heros. The pizza guy was a hero to.
That's called lowering the bar.
Cops that get ran over while writing a speeding ticket are not heros.
We had a local fireman die last year. He had a heart attack at home while on vacation. Yeah he was called a hero.

a reply to: DAVID64

In my opinion, heroic acts are those which anyone should do, but only a very few would do. Being a hero means being that one person who does the right thing, when thousands of others would walk away, or just throw up their hands and wail.

You do not have to do the impossible, or do something that has only ever been seen in a Jerry Bruckheimer production in order to do something heroic. You just have to be aware of your responsibilities as a human being. In truth, that is all it has ever meant to be a hero, because it is only since standards in general dropped, that one could differentiate between a hero and a regular person.

Back in days gone by, everyone was expected to act for the betterment of the group, because tribes needed to be that way in order to survive. Nowadays community is a shadow of itself, and many people just do not see it as their duty as a human being to do what ought to be done for the greater good, in any given situation. The only difference between a hero and a regular person, is that a hero remembers his duty to the whole human race, and seeks to act for its betterment in the heat of testing circumstances, like everyone should, but only few still do.

I'm a hero because I'm the only person brave enough to handle my socks!!!

You are correct OP. That word is used far to often. Simply being a policeman or a fire man etc does not make one a hero. Its a persons actions that count.

a reply to: DAVID64

Watching the news, I saw a story about a dog dialing 911 when his owner collapsed, so of course, they're calling the dog a hero.

I'll still call the dog a hero. He went the extra mile

You're right about the rest of them though

Well, I think you are a hero to your child, maybe in the world not so much. All the people that were helped by someone
probably feel the one that was there for them was a hero. In this world today, it's a wonder when anyone steps up to help someone in need. So yeah, I think they are heroes.

a reply to: DAVID64

I've saved a couple of lives in incidents that I don't particularly want to talk about and honestly, what I did wasn't special at all. I did what was right and what was needed to be done. If I had done anything differently, I would've been scarred by horror--I'll pass on that and you bet, that featured in my motivation. In a sense, that would almost say that my acts, which others would call heroic, were also motivated by self interest--to avoid witnessing the grotesque, to avoid living with guilt of having done nothing.

I don't think that, simply because I acted where others did not, makes my actions in the past heroic. Some people, when they witness the terrible or frightening, freeze up in shock. It's a pretty normal response. If anything, the difference between why I can move when others can't is due to my experiences with trauma. I'm dissociative--I don't freak out, I shut down and move. I'm the best person to have around in a crisis and that's exactly what saved those couple of hides.

I'm not comfortable with anybody calling me a hero and that has happened in the past. I even balked at typing up this post. Saving a life in an one-off event isn't a hero. I met a hero in my book a couple months ago. A surgeon who spends half his year working and the other half going to third world countries to provide free medical care to those totally without. He could work full time year long to make a ton of money but he doesn't. He splits his time right down the middle so that one serves to let him do another. That guy is a hero but $10 says that he'll never have a news story written about him.

There are people in the world who live their lives in amazing and caring ways on a regular basis. That's my definition of a hero.

Here is one definition I thought was close to what we all might expect a Hero to be.

A hero works beyond the scope of his or her job, possibly as a volunteer. A hero responds to a social need, or the needs of a person or group. A hero moves out of her comfort zone (i.e., doing something she has no experience with), and may even put her life on the line.

Mind you the above quote should read " his or her comfort zone" but you get the idea of what I liked in this article and I found it on this site.

www.readersdigest.ca...

I agree that the "Hero" tag is over worked and over used, very much like the "Terrorist" tag.
After awhile they have no affect on the recipient of the above themes.

Good rant!

Regards, Iwinder