What Defines a Hero?

Heroes, what makes them? Courage, what is it? Despite all the hype our media in its various forms has given to what it calls heroes, it still leaves a question. What is a hero? Is it a person who puts their very existence one the line for a moment or cause or thing they embrace only, or can it be someone who fights quietly, does what ever is needed to accomplish something, good then comes out of it, and no one else knows at the time who made that domino in history fall where, and when it did, when it didn't want to? Not all the founding fathers of this country are named. There must have been countless, quiet, unknown individuals who help support the movement triggering the events leading to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and what ensued as a result of this dangerous act. Most of them probably suffered some penalty for it, but the price was worth it to them, and to do otherwise would have been a self-betrayal: something unthinkable to certain rare people.

A warrior named John Wyclif, ordained a priest in the middle ages, took his duty to serve God seriously, defied a government law against putting the Bible in the common spoken language of England, became a criminal for doing so, with a death penalty attached his particular crime, because he knew the value of truth, and how it defeats lies. The only sword he raised was a pen, paper, his faith, his mind, and his courage: if he hadn't, where would we be now?

A woman rode the bus one day, running an errand and when the uniformed man driving it told her to surrender her seat to a person with a lighter skin and different features, she refused, believing against commonly held opinion by that certain members of that group, that she was their equal. Her arrest started a landslide, that to this day is still happening, and again I ask, what if she hadn't. I don't know who the first physically handicapped pioneer in the fight for true equality was, but when public transportation didn't want to accommodate their needs on train and bus systems, they stepped out of the ranks of the ordinary and said I've had enough, I'm human too.