Hero

What would it be like to have a pivotal moment, one that changes your life and everyone’s life forever? With no fragments of metal burning your feet, piercing your hands, chasing your eyes? Are you everything that you could be? What would it be like to be a tiny particle diffusing into a concentration of such enormous gradient that life itself could not conquer? Is everything how it should be? Would it be the end – and could we look back and be proud, of society, of friends, of ourselves? Would it take a thousand miles and a thousand years to realize that nothing really matters? Would it take a thousand miles and a thousand years to realize that everything matters? What if we had time to do the things we care about? Would starvation be extinguished, would hate cease to exist? What if we had the hypocritical power to remember the ultimate achievement of human life - by pressing a red button and stating ‘authorize’ – and killing every single living thing within a fifty mile square radius? We care about politics, we really do. There are only a few problems: corruption, greed, uselessness, relative lack of ease, hypocrisy. Come to think of it, there are quite a few problems. And maybe that is a problem within itself. Would there be a cause or a response? Could the result be called courageous or cowardly? Do you believe that my truth is not your truth? Do you believe that God can exist, with many different faces, at many different times? What is religion? What is power? What is love? What is hope? What is grace? Would you sacrifice everything for your country? Could you be the person who saves the day? Would you sacrifice everything for your neighbor?Would you sacrifice everything for nothing? Would you step into a wall of fire and never look back?Would you love another human being as you love yourself? Would you become vindicated? (Go for a walk and look up at the sky, and remember you are just a little thing after all). What would it take to become a hero?

2005 Ed.