Searching for heroes and random acts of courage

Walking normally through the routine and grind of every day, I often find myself looking for heroes.

It started a long time ago when I was listening to my Austrian grandmother, Omi, talking about the 2nd World War.  Young, headstrong, half Jewish, unmarried and pregnant, she was forced to flee Vienna as the Nazis took control. Smuggled out by the Quakers, she was one of the lucky ones, ending up safely in England.  But what I remembered from her story was not the excitement of the adventure, nor the knife-edged fear of fleeing for your life, instead, it  was her telling of  the courage of others. The neighbours who hid Jews in their houses, knowing they would all be killed if they were caught. The Quakers and all the others who risked their lives to save complete strangers. There were so many ordinary people who were so brave and no one will ever know who they were. They didn't do it for glory or praise or recognition, they did it because, however dangerous it was, they believed it was the right thing to do.

And I remember thinking then- "that's what a true hero is." And wondering if I would ever be brave enough to be one. 

 And so I started collecting stories of random acts of courage ( perhaps you have some to add.)

There were the Singhalese neighbours in Sri Lanka who hid Ninesh's Tamil aunt in their bathroom while her family house was burnt to the ground, and then smuggled her to the airport in the boot of their car. There's the mum at the Nursery where I work, who lost a leg when she threw herself in front of a lorry to save her daughter from disappearing under its wheels. There's the dad, born with no arms, who has never let it stop him from doing anything. 

 And then there's Liam.

 I met him when I was having lunch with my friend in a cafe in Littlehampton. Like her, he is undergoing treatment for cancer and after ordering lunch for himself and a friend, he walked over to our table and put his arm around my friend's shoulders.

" Have you seen that film The Way?" he asked her.  "All those people  following a footpath through France and Spain. When we have beaten this illness, Claudia, we will walk it together, you and I." 

And leaving my friend wrapped in hope, he went back to his table to eat his lunch.. 

Turns out he has done many things for many people: he was in the cafe to fix the roof, he had come late at night on an SOS mission to fix something in my friend's house, he had heard that a local home for adults with learning difficulties was being closed down and single handedly and very quietly, raised much of the money to save it and then became so close to one of the residents that they now live with him and his wife. All of this he did, while being treated for cancer

" He has touched the lives of everyone here,"  my friend said.

I looked at him, eating his lunch and realised that in a tiny cafe, in a small part of Littlehampton I had found a hero.  

 

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

It's  what Holden Caulfield says in The Catcher in the Rye. And if you change the words " "mature man,' to " true hero," it is a mantra to live by.  

So, I will keep walking through life, collecting stories of random acts of courage, looking for heroes, in the world around me, dreaming that if I ever had to do it, I could be one too.

My friend at work said that his wife had said goodnight to their 6 year old son and asked him if he wanted to have the light on for 10 more minutes so that he could read.

" Yes," he said, " I do want to keep the light on, but I don't want to read. Is it ok if I just stand in front of the mirror and look at myself?"

I'd like to think it was so that he could search for the hero within- but I think it was probably to admire  his new haircut!