What are super heroes? They are usually young boys who fight villains with strength, flight, and/or guns. Their abilities are so great that most are able to save the world. Sometimes, they do not have any super powers at all. But they are called a hero because they face the challenges society puts on their weak and innocent subjects.
A hero is a heroic person or a powerful main fictional character who, faced with real adversity, combats through heroic acts of strength, courage, or imagination. As other previously solely gender-specific words, hero is used to describe any male, although hero usually refers to men. However, women who are true-blooded heroes can also be called heroes too. Usually, hero acts out of a personal conviction of rectifying wrongs or upholding justice. It could also mean displaying a special talent such as bravery, skill in music or in sports, or artistic genius. Some heroes are mythological creatures like the fairy, the serpent and the goat, while others are characters created by a writer or a cartoonist.
We can call our tenacious courage heroes, but in actuality all tenacious courage is not a special breed. Every one of us has within us a little amount of heroic imagination, so to speak, and we use it to our advantage when we need to. When we are badly injured in an accident, our tenacious courage to live on has us going toward life after death. We fight our way through to the next day and continue to live heroically over the years as our ancestors did.
There is another form of heroism that is more rare among men than among women, which is the heroic deed. This form of courage is sometimes difficult to recognize, since we tend to think of heroic acts as heroic imagination. A man rescuing a damsel in distress from a burning building or a woman running towards a hostile mob is an example of heroic imagination. But if such an event had actually happened, the man would have been regarded a hero. And if he or she had died in the process, their death would have been deemed just as heroic. But in this case, the man or woman acts out of love for humanity and the greater good, whereas in the example of the damsel in distress, her situation would have been understandable only as a result of her own lack of appreciation of the situation.
Women have their own special gift of heroic imagination, which is probably why they are so often the victims of terrible injuries and their rescuers. In fact, women are more courageous than men at times, because they have so many caring and supportive friends who rush to their help. They are ready to sacrifice almost anything for their friends. Their heroisms may include rescuing a drowning woman from a river, or a handicapped person from a wreck. Sometimes their rescuers are even known as heroes.
But sometimes a woman’s rescuer is not a heroic figure at all. It could be a malevolent stranger with malicious motives who has seized the opportunity to take advantage of her. A famous movie quotes the phrase “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” If we take that expression to its literal meaning, it should certainly apply to our concept of heroism. Every time a person responds to a situation with bravery instead of selfishness or fear, they are being heroically, even if only in the mind of the audience.