It does not diminish the term if we use it to describe athletes, while also using it to describe our brave firefighters and soldiers. We must remember why heroes are important to us as a society. We must remember why, as individuals, we need and want heroes at all.
Few would doubt that firefighters, police officers, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines often display the courage and other noble qualities capable of inspiring the type of admiration necessary to make one our hero.
Some may doubt that scholars, politicians, business leaders, teachers, social workers, construction workers, mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, and, yes, athletes, perform deeds of such value and nobility that they too should be honored with the same term, but they do.
Firefighters are the popular hero of the moment, and they deserve their moment in the sun. The courage shown by the FDNY in those harrowing moments of September 11 will live with most Americans and other good citizens of the world as long as we live, and beyond.
A century ago, as our great cities were under the constant threat of destruction by fire, firefighters were the heroes of the day. Many early-twentieth-century silent films displayed firefighters' courage and bravery as popular entertainment. Somewhere between then and September 10, 2001 we lost sight of the value of firefighters.
It is, of course, a shame that a calamity of the magnitude of the attack on the Twin Towers was necessary for us to once again fully appreciate the nature of the work of "the bravest," for in reality they were simply doing the same thing that Tuesday morning in September that they always do. An act, admittedly, which by its very nature, is heroic.
To run into a burning, crumbling building is perhaps the quintessential act of selfless courage. As such, we are once more holding firefighters up, rightly, as people to emulate. Not that most of us will ever be confronted with the need to run into a burning building. Thankfully for us, there are brave men and women who have volunteered themselves to perform that task for us. To them, we are finally saying thanks for years of service in the shadows with little recognition.
Still, to call them heroes is more than just to say thank you, or we respect you. To call someone a hero says much more. It says we draw inspiration from you.
If they can do "that," we say to ourselves, then we have to be able to face our fears. For surely, the brave have fears too. We admire them. We know we are better for having witnessed their bravery.
In a similar manner, many of us admire and anoint great thinkers as our heroes. Whether it be Plato or Sir Isaac Newton, Leonardo DaVinci or Albert Einstein, great thinkers take us to places human beings have never been before. They raise the level of understanding we have of the world around us, and make our all too complicated world seem somehow comprehensible. At the very least, they make us think.
This is true even if we don't understand everything they said or wrote. Their striving for knowledge, pushing the limits of human understanding, is truly heroic.
Like a firefighter's bravery, a great scholar's use of intellect inspires us to reach our full potential. It opens the door to the possible. We admire them, and are better for sharing in their intellectual gifts.
Others seek and find heroes closer to home. In the daily struggle to survive, the striving for a better life. Many of us see our parents as heroes, fighting the odds to give us the best they could.
A single mother working all day as a housekeeper, working her fingers raw, to put food on the table and a roof over her children's heads. She is a hero.
Like all our chosen heroes, the heroes in our homes, in our lives, inspire us, pushing us toward our better selves. That is what being a hero is all about.
So, are our well-heeled, sometimes spoiled athletes, heroes? Absolutely. Like all of the previously mentioned heroes, great athletes have the ability to lift us, to make us better than we might otherwise be.
Each time Michael Jordan soared from the foul line to dunk a basketball with seeming ease, he lifted us. When Babe Ruth sent titanic home runs from one ball field after another, he lifted us. As Pele hit a perfect bicycle kick just under the crossbar, he lifted us.
It is our realization that someone of our kind, a homo sapien, can do the incredible, the valiant, the profound that makes the act performed take on an heroic significance. Athletes, firefighters, scholars, moms and dads can surely all be heroes.
We must always remember, however, that the people who we elevate to the status of modern-day hero are not in fact the near-perfect heroes of Greek mythology. They are flesh and blood -- prone to error -- and in the end, like us, all too human.
Although we rightly perceive our heroes actions to be an indication of an ability or character trait, which enhances and ennobles humankind, it would be foolish .
If we naively believe that any person will always act in an heroic fashion we will surely be disappointed. This is true whether that person is a firefighter or father ... astronaut or athlete. There is no need to list examples from history. There are far too many to list anyway, both distant in time and recently.
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