Deep Into Virtue - The Way of the Heroine/Hero

Glenn: It's always a beautiful thing, to see individuals do good deeds. I often think about - each time I'm seeing it - what's in their minds, who they are, where they come from, what they've been through...what they are going through now! I know each is different so I look for, and try to find, the common thread(s) that link them. It's important to me - these virtuous...their virtues. Not a likely thing that I'll be interviewing them ha. But, if I turn inward, to what prompts ME, to do good things, (that I "sometimes" try to do ha), then I'm sure I'll find some reasonable answers. 

We all know about "Heroines/Heroes". They're the ones who jump into the lake to save a drowning person, or rescue someone from a cliff, or emerge from the flames with a survivor. And there are many more heroic feats - all of the countless other heroes/heroines - NOT celebrated. We know them and we cite their virtues and we sing them in our songs. They are worthy. But we are innately ALL worthy and so we are innately ALL, potentially, heroes. I can't presume to know - perhaps each must decide for each person's own self - how to find our "Heroine/Hero" in ourselves.  It is a longing; and if the Hero's act is our LAST act, then it will be our greatest act. We know this to be true. That has never changed. Somewhere in this immutable "hero-ness" that makes us so human,  is what defines us at our very best - but more importantly, our truest selves.

When I look inward, to find the common threads of "do gooders", I'm thinking about my own values. I'm thinking about what I also have in common - if anything - with those persons. What do I hold dear, what is important to me, what do I believe, and what do I consistently abide and defend?  When I look IN - if this is my search, then, indeed, it is a search for values/virtues. The virtues I find: how did I get them, where did they come from? I don't know; but whether I was born with them and then they (some of them) were activated or I acquired them, .....unquestionably, I will find them. 

Many times, this inward reflection is a place that many of us don't want to go. We are built and we are destroyed, many times in our lives. Others, for the most part, played a critical role in the building and destroying. It's hard to think of those that influenced us...shaped us...destroyed us. Because even to go to the place in our minds where the builders are, then, too, we most assuredly will, find our destroyers. So we don't go there often. When we do it will take learning - like separating wheat from the wheat plant - to embellish only those who built us up and emulated us, and therefore embracing and accepting by default those who did not. But, go there we must, if we are to become the Heroes/Heroines of our dreams; the Heroines/Heroes we were called/meant to become. 

So there are some things we must do, and they are: pay attention to good deeds; reflect on our own virtues and how we connect to what we are observing; source our virtues - where/who did they come from - by thinking about our influencers, mentors, and destroyers; and finally, name our virtues and act consciously upon them. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Every time we nurture these action-steps we are moving closer to becoming, I believe, all that we have hoped AND dreamed we could become. Every time we do good - and ALL of those steps are good steps, we are self-affirming i.e. realizing our humanity.