Youth & illusion of own capabilities, induce heroic behaviour. Trying to be aggressive into petty matters, putting your nose into everyone’s business, not tolerating individual instances of injustice to anyone.
Hero: Someone who stupidly or selflessly intervenes into the matters of others to help them grow or come out of pain “
A real hero is someone who fulfils his own responsibilities to his immediate family, friends & clients first & then goes on to benefit as many more people as he can.
“Then” is the operative word here.
Plenty of people do injustice to their own spouses, parents, children or proximal set of people, by getting involved in the larger affairs before they fulfil their primary responsibilities. Thats not a hero, that’s an impatient ego-hungry imposter.
There is another set of people who start acting the hero too early. Before they have access to power or resources required, & before they build the capabilities that being a hero requires. They start burning out serving a very few people, and conclude that it is futile and impossible to be a hero at scale without superpowers.
So a real hero has two primary requirements (1) To fulfil what is minimally expected from him for his immediate proximity people’s well being & (2) Only start after he has considerable power and resources (time & power, money or intellect) to help a bigger set of people.
A depressed, frustrated and cynic hero stops the good work & thus stops being a hero. To prevent that he needs to know that he is “not really a hero”. And that there are limitations to how much you can help people change their lives. People have different perceptions about what is good for them, some people are nasty, cunning, sadistic or evil – for no reason. People can’t be changed by talking to them, even by punishing them.
Not going to refer to the examples of – the dark knight or lord of the rings – perpetual fight & implicit perpetual existence of evil. Because they are works of fiction.
The lack of background music in real life spoils most of the fun being hero offers.
For those whose only life focus is fighting gender injustice, “Hero” is a gender neutral word IMHO. One doesn’t become a hero merely by presence or absence of specific reproductive organs.
Being selfless, or at least pretending it, which is equivalent to being illogical, stupid & acting not in own interest for most part of the life, is a primary requirement
When you touch and alleviate pain from many peoples’ lives, or help them grow and enjoy the gift of life, what do you get ? What is in it for you ?
The short answer is “Nothing”.
The long answer is …
Well what do you get being a hero, the long answer requires first finding out what you don’t want, instead of what you want.
I will be updating the link here when I attempt to provide that long answer.
Till then, hero or not, have fun.