What is a Hero?

There are many ways of changing the world. We are, in fact, all of us always changing the world - whether we intend to or not. Small or large, we all wield influence, and that influence bestows a duty upon us.

A hero, as we mean the word in the Academy, is a person who does the hard and dangerous work of taking responsibility for how they change the world.

To become the kind of person who has a positive impact on the world, you must prioritize pursuing excellence in honor. You must set aside all excuses which compete with your resolve to be a man or woman of honor.

Honor is not a mystical or outdated set of expectations. Neither is it an arrogant and militant defense of one’s ego. Honor is a universal quality of every community, whether explicitly acknowledged or not. Every community has a goal and a set of values which unite three or more people. Honor is the communal recognition of how well a particular member embodies those values. Shame is its opposite. Their internal counterparts are integrity and guilt, respectively - we can have those regardless of our community seeing our success or failure.

This means that honor codes are as varied as there are communities. And as the health of a community declines, so does its sensibility of honor. Dying honor is a symptom of a deeper malady - the death of deep community. And yet, honor is the gateway to re-enchanting community itself and restoring it to health, if honor is pursued with the right values.

Heroes, then, are those within a community who most effectively act as exemplars of honor. They embody the values best, they defend the honor of the whole community, they inspire others to emulate their example. They raise the bar of excellence, and they possess the most influence over shaping the values of the community itself. This means that to be a hero is to be the opposite of a lone wolf. A hero cannot exist without their community, and a hero cannot be made without community. Heroes shape and are shaped by their community.

If you want to become someone who happens to the world instead of the world happening to you, you need to invest in communing with those kinds of people. Ally yourself with those who are themselves exemplars, and their lives of honor will lift yours.

You may think that you are not cut out for the path of the hero.

But the true heroes are not always those who have the most power or the most attention. They aren’t always in the limelight or in the front of the fray. As we stated in the beginning: all of us are always changing the world. We all have a sphere of influence for which we are responsible and held accountable.

The potato farmer with a small plot of land who tells stories to his grandchildren of an evening. The garbage man who wakes in the wee hours of the morning cheerfully. The mural artist who beautifies the back room of a coffee shop. The data entry clerk who chooses patience and kindness.

All of these can be heroes, and should be.

Both the desire for more power (or opportunity or privilege etcetera) before choosing excellence, and the desire to avoid excellence to avoid attention, are excuses which disenchant the world. They kill community, and they destroy your life.

Every person, every personality, every place is meaningful and necessary. Don’t waste what is placed before you by neglecting it.

How are you changing the world with your life? Do you want a more excellent way?