What makes a Hero?

If you were to choose between being a hero and being a villain, what would you do? Apart from some exceptions, I’d say, most of us would choose to be heroes. Only, it isn’t always that we get to play hero. And, thankfully, it isn’t only those two centre roles that are open to us. The movie always has a lot of characters in it. Our lives are a lot like movies,…of course, movies are inspired by real lives in some way or the other, and we are the heroes of the stories of our own lives.

There was once this movie, which made me think about this matter and think really hard. In this movie, there’s a hero (as we like to call them) and his best friend. They are great warriors. And there’s our heroine. Both the guys are in love with this girl and naturally our heroine is in love with the hero. The best friend tells his buddy, our hero, about his love and the hero keeps mum about his own love. Heroes always sacrifice, you see. As the story develops, there’s war, and the antagonists of the movie force our hero and his best friend to fight each other blindfolded. Essentially, the hero ends up killing his best friend. And turns out, the best friend guy already knew that it was the hero he was battling against all along AND about his love too. So, who’s the one to sacrifice now? The best friend did not get his love and lost his life too. And as I was watching the movie, I thought it was necessary, you know, for the best friend to die, because it was inevitable. Our hero couldn’t carry on the mission to “save the day” without doing that. There’s always someone and something to sacrifice in a movie. We think that someone has to sacrifice for the heroes to win. We love the hero and think that the sidekick should always be the one to loose his life for the hero to have a happy ending. But of course, if the hero didn’t have a happy ending and died in the middle, he wouldn’t be the hero in the first place. But don’t you think it’s a little bit selfish of us? Do we imagine ourselves to be that sidekick? Certainly not. I’d certainly not want to loose my love and my life. I’m not saying that I’d snatch the one I love from my best friend and try to live on – I know that would make me a villain. Sounds scary, huh? There’s a single thin thread between deciding whether we choose to become a hero or a villain,…or a sidekick, who gains nothing and looses everything and yet, is not even remembered.

For those who want to choose, to become villains, I’ve got nothing to say because it’s their life and I got a lot to do than make choices for them. For those who choose to be heroes, I’d like to tell them that it takes a lot to become a hero. A lot more than themselves. And I’d like to salute the ‘side’ heroes who are the actual heroes. If it weren’t for them, there’d have been no heroes to walk the parade. So, will you choose to become a hero or make one?