Over the past 10 years or so, we have all been hungry for films that feature a hero in them—from Spiderman, to Ironman, to Captain America, to the Guardians of the Galaxy, which according to the latest box office reports, is the #1 movie of the summer, grossing nearly $252 million. We especially love the ones that show how a seemingly ordinary person can be brave, and inspirational and can harness a wealth of power of one’s fingertips, and let’s face it—we all want to save the world.
But does it go deeper than that? Who are these people we idolize? Are they truly worthy of our adoration? Maybe. Perhaps they serve to make us strive to reach our own internal “hero”. After all, there are everyday people who perform amazing feats everyday; like the teacher who spends her own money to buy supplies for her students, who stays at school hours after she should have went home because she’s doing extra tutoring for those students who asked her for help.
There are the children who face adversity everyday, but refuse to give up—they continue going to school, they resist the temptation of drugs and they work hard to become the best people they can be.
It’s the single mother and father who work tirelessly to support their families; the two-parent families who work hard to give their children a loving home.
There are hundreds of people who perform countless deeds that go unnoticed by some, unappreciated by all except the few who make it a point to pay attention.
These are the true heros—yet we don’t search for heros in our own home, our own neighborhood, or even in our “world” as we know it. We search for them on the big screen, where they appear larger than life, with super powers that we could never hope to attain, and we watch eagerly as they make the world just a little—or a lot—better for the people in it. And for those of us watching, we get to live vicariously through them.
Perhaps we can learn that while we are entertained by our on-screen heros, we owe it to ourselves to acknowledge our real life ones too.
Dawn M. Edwards 