Every astronaut has flown for every one of us. When I wrote the song “Flying For Me”, after the Challenger misfortune, it included “She was flying for me,” in reference to Christa McAuliffe. She was. They all were. They were flying for everyone. So, this song seemed appropriate at a celebration of extraordinary accomplishment.
https://youtu.be/WJBSDQ82qPU Flying for Me video link
Extraordinary accomplishment -- that seems to part of what we hold in our hearts and recognize when we say someone is a hero. We recognize something special that we admire, something we aspire to be ourselves. The accomplishment has come at great effort and inspires us to be more than we thought we could be.
I like to think that each of us has a hero inside.
We also have a demon within. It is what we do with the gifts we
have that can possibly make us a hero. It is the choices we make. A moment of
weakness, anger or jealousy may awaken the demon within.
When it comes to making choices, for all of us, it is the values we gather around us that determine whether our hero within will emerge. It is the way we choose to live in every moment. It is what we do, or don’t do, what we could do, or can’t do.
These choices, in the end, will define our character, our humanity, and whether or not we will have made some contribution to the life around us.
Talent and success don’t make a hero. Celebrity is different from heroism. For me, being able to write music and sing all over the world does not make me a hero -- much as I aspire to be one. I constantly remind myself that at any moment, for each of us, there is the possibility of falling away from responsible choices. I have enormous compassion for those who fall-- as I have fallen so many times.
I have compassion for all of us and for the places throughout the world where it is so evident how profoundly humanity has left the path of responsible action. There are instances everywhere of people being less than human.
How can we hope to rise above the worst we are capable of and allow that hero within to emerge? Perhaps it is the recognition of our ability to make the choice that gives us the opportunity to rise above our weaknesses and transcend our demons. It has something to do with character and conscious choice.
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Perhaps character makes a hero.
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Perhaps Conscious Choice is essential to the process.
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Perhaps Spirit is the Source and Grace is the Way.
Let us celebrate those with the wisdom and courage to choose between the demons and the heroes within.
John Denver
Windstar Journal, (approx.) 1988
