by Eric Lannak

Created on: April 30, 2008

If you want to be a hero, you've already blown your chances. Being a hero means putting the needs of others ahead of your own, and then acting. Sometimes a single act can make a hero, and sometimes it takes a lifetime of effort to earn the title. But either way, becoming a hero comes from helping other people. It does NOT come from aspiring to hero status.

Heroes usually don't want that title. War heroes don't think about glory when they're diving on grenades, directing fire under hostile conditions, or fighting fearlessly with terrible wounds. They're just getting a job done.

The people who saved the savagely beaten Reginald Denny during the 1992 LA riots did not seek to be heroes. They bravely confronted angry thugs to save a horribly injured man.

The heroes of 9/11, Britain's bus bombings, and the Spanish subway bombings would have preferred to be somewhere else. They did not want to be heroes, but they were there, and they didn't see any other choice.

Some heroes earn their status from public service, science, and good deeds. Mother Theresa and Jonas Salk come to mind, but they did not seek "hero" status, they earned it by what they did, what they accomplished.

Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, and Abraham Lincoln are all great names in history, all heroes, but do you think any of them gave a second thought to their status? No. They had tough decisions to make, difficult campaigns to wage, and persevered to reach their goals.

Three were killed because of their dedication, not for their status as heroes.

Being an "everyday" hero is more attainable for most, but we need to separate the "heroic" from "doing what you're supposed to". Being a good parent gets you a measure of heroism, but being a good parent is what you're SUPPOSED to do. Solving the production line's relay glitch may briefly make you a hero at the plant, but as a good employee it's the kind of thing you're SUPPOSED to do. Dropping an anonymous tip about a local drug dealer may be a mildly heroic deed, but good citizens are SUPPOSED to do that.

Heroism requires an extra step, and that's where so many of us fail. Helping an elderly person with the groceries, tending to your neighbor's child when they have a fall, offering a jump to someone with a dead battery, or buying a sandwich for a panhandler are all tiny acts of heroism. Letting the person with two items get ahead of your overflowing shopping cart in a checkout line is a tiny act of heroism. Any little act that places another's needs above yours is an act of heroism.

Let's start by doing the things we're supposed to do, and then take it a little further. BE a good parent. BE a good employee. BE a good citizen.

And then, do a little more. Hold a door for someone with a walker. Give a dollar for Jerry's Kids. Plant a tree.

Tiny acts will not put you in the headlines, but if everyone did five tiny selfless acts a day, we would have a heroic people.

And then, when the big heroes are needed, the men and women who lay it on the line to save their fellows, their people, and society... then, we will have a people who are ready to do the things that need to be done.

We could be a heroic people. And each of us, with our little contributions, will be heroes.

Learn more about this author, Eric Lannak.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.