What
is true heroism? Is it in the great acquisitions of life? Is it in the grand
reputation gained? Is it in the prevailing power secured? Or is it in the
saving of a life? Is it in living for a life? Is it in living through the pain?
Is it in rejecting death when confronted by it? Is it in living in spite of it
all?
It may be all of the above. Some are more in
keeping with the spirit of heroism and others are less so. It may be less of what is acquired and
more of what is learned. It may arise
more from within than without. It may be
in the surviving rather than in the material enriching. It may be in the
holding on rather than in the giving up. In all that, there is a pinch of
heroism here and there.
But at its core, heroism for the purpose of
this writing is the impulse to not give in to the impulse to give up. It is the
resistance to all resistance to the continuation of life. It is choosing to
live notwithstanding the droning of the monotonous
present. It is the courage
to confront a deadpan existence and to walk on by and to keep on walking on by.
This is the heroism of continuing on. It is the heroism of living for living
sake.
It is enduringly heroic because there is a
stinging nag to the ordinariness of life. It is the routine of a life without
surprises. Nothing unfolds itself. Nothing is revealed. Nothing is new. Has somebody just murdered the quirky Jack
in the box of life?
Everyday goes by in a recycle of the
unchanging. The present differentiates itself not from the future and the past
exists by sheer default. It is no different from a life lived between
intermissions where one does not know when it all first started and when it will
all finally end. It is a life in discontinuity, no less in disarray and no more
in certainty.
How
does a life fit in here, in this
rut of existence? Where is the heroism in the
bowels of ordinariness? Where is the glory? Where is its prize? Oh,
surely there is. Surely there is. And there is much to learn from such a
life; which in quietude, it lives on; in solitude, it finds calm and in
destitute, it weaves meaning.
A life like this is not to be underestimated.
It is not to be derided. It should in fact be embraced because it draws its
passion, strength and fortitude not from events most fleeting. It
is
consistent. It is unpretentious. It is
dependable. It shuns a mob stirred up by the polemic of a fiery preacher. Its
nerves are not jangled by the gravitational pull of an immersive ideology.
Neither is it beholden to the wiles of worldly enchantment nor the whimsical
spike of a transient mood.
In everything, it accepts with a cool
resolute, an unfazed and unhurried disposition. Somehow, this life stands on a
rock from
within and remains unmoved by events without. Although it is not
immune from debilitating emotions, which stretches with intemperance, it is not
defeated by them. Its greatest virtue is to carry on carrying on. It persists
in persisting. It is insistent on insisting. Such is the distilled value of
heroism. It is the heroism of facing the dread, accepting the dread and
releasing the dread.
It is a life worthy of my adulation because
time is not perceived as
a bondage or a chain but an opportunity. It is therefore
not a sentence to be served out but a life to be lived out. It is an
opportunity embodied to live fully and experientially. To savor the little
things that make up life. To marvel at the apparently plain but most empowering
fact of just being alive. And to live with unremitting gratitude until the day
this stubborn but resilient life draws its last deserving breath and passes
away quietly.
But the heroism of such exit is not in the way
it ends. It is in the privilege it enjoys while alive for living to the fullest
with undaunted contentment, most valiant and most unspoiled. Now that's the
heroism of continuing on. And often, such a life receives no standing ovation,
no flowery eulogy, no grand send off, no posthumous mention in books,
plays or movie deals. It leaves this world very much like a mist would leave
its ether host. But for
the discerning, for those who are taking the road less
traveled, their absence resonates deeply with them because such a heroic life
shrinks not when it is called to answer the primary duty of humanity. It is the
call to live and to live on. Cheerz.
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