Heroes

Yesterday An Teaglach packed up and when to the local Movie emporium to watch The Avengers. The film itself was quite enjoyable to the age groups represented by our family, and we left feeling that we had actually gotten our money's worth (A rare thing nowadays).

After we left I was pondering what made the movie so enjoyable for me.  Yes, it was well done and the effects were great.  Yes, it had an engaging storyline and very good acting.  Yes, the actors portrayed very well the pictures I had in my own mind of what the characters would be like.  But there was something else, something indefinable that moved the movie from the category of enjoyable to the category of something I want to emulate in my own life.

And I then it came to me:  the movie was about heroes acting like heroes - fighting evil.

We live in a world where the heroes society worships have been transformed from defending good and fighting evil to how much the touch and entertain us personally.  We seek to emulate the successful, rather than emulate those who do good.

And in The Avengers, the heroes are shown as nothing other than heroes.  Personal flaws?  They're there in abundance.  Inability to  communicate?  They all have issues.  But never in the movie are they portrayed as anything less than people who, in the end, are seeking to fight for and defend those that need it.

We have let such a high standard fall.  Heroes serve causes, or even serve themselves.  We have debased the term to the point that either everyone is a "hero", or no-one is.

Which is to our detriment.  If we are all our own heroes, if we only worship heroes that entertain or fulfill us, we have reduced heroism to a narrow band that encompasses ourselves.  There are no greater causes, only that which ultimately serves ourselves. 

And heroes which only serve themselves are, in the end, not heroes at all.   They do not call out to that which is within us which is better but only reflect back a larger image of our own selfish desires.

We are, desperately, in need of true heroes - and a society that values them.