Need a Hero

Where have all the good men gone And where are all the gods? 

Where’s the street-wise Hercules To fight the rising odds?

Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed? Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need

I need a hero

Bonnie Tyler pinpoints what we all need of in her 1985 single. From that four year old tying a towel around his neck and jumping from his bunkbed to his newly laid off father wishing someone would save the his family, we all need someone or something to look toward to save our day. We all feel, especially in times trial, the need for some kind of intervention, some swooping or dashing or flying on our behalf, not just someone in a faraway land fighting some war or some politician fighting for a paycheck, but someone to fight for us, for our safety and prosperity individually. We need someone to care enough to leap tall buildings in a single bound, race faster than a speeding bullet and outrun that locomotive to catch us because, like it or not, we all fall. We can’t defy gravity or stop time so at least a few times in life we’re sprawled on the ground wishing there was someone, anyone to do what we can’t.

The problem is that while we all need a hero, such a superhuman entity, or even help, doesn’t exist. Sure, there are kind souls in the world who truly care. There are people, millions of them, who fight every day for a better tomorrow but no one is out there to save me. No one cares about my problems, about my missing assignment or my scraped knee or my broken heart or my lost job or my losing battle against every trial that comes down my broken road. It seems like even in greatest need, there’s no help for even the strongest and bravest of men and women in our world.

Grant W. Miswald Jr., like the vast majority of us had no heroic intervention. Through the frontlines of the Second World War he wasn’t miraculously saved from a POW camp. He wasn’t part of some heroic rescue mission or a battle that changed the course of the war. He wasn’t awarded metals or honors for bravery or sacrifice and he didn’t get into the history book as a soldier giving his life for something he deemed necessary. Without getting his day or even minute of fame he staggered from a massacred troop division carrying only the blood of murdered comrades into the village where he would find night refuge with another American infantry. He lead a group of three survivors along an empty ridge only to witness their death by mis-ordered American bullets. He was shot, torn, trampled, bruised and bleeding. He fought, ran, tumbled and tripped through unbeatable circumstances and left only with his only prize, life. No one saved him and he didn’t stop me from falling or change the course of the war but somehow his actions, combined with the actions of thousands of others gave us something to live for.

Sure, he didn’t save my life and he didn’t stop me from falling flat on my face but when it came to it, we don’t need someone to stop us from falling. We need the opportunity to fall. No matter how much we hate to admit it, the simple fact that there is no hero stop us from stumbling is what defines the success of those brave men and women who fought for our right to fall. I get to wish I was bitten by a radioactive arachnid and I get procrastinate to write that essay for my American history class. I get to trip and I get to look down at that pavement that just ripped open my pants and bloodied my knee and realize that if it weren’t for the sacrifices made by America’s veterans, there wouldn’t be a road to run and I wouldn’t be free to run it. If it weren’t for the bullet wounds, the misfired shots and the pain suffered by prisoners of war I might never get the chance to scrape a knee or lose a job or procrastinate an assignment and I wouldn’t be blessed with the self determination to not only pick myself up, but to carry that strength into honoring the sacrifices of soldiers fallen and fighting by using that determination to make my world a better place.

So maybe there isn’t a superman to sweep from the heavens above and save a sad situation. Maybe there isn’t an end all solution to all the world’s woes and my individual struggles, but maybe I don’t need a hero because America’s veterans cared about me without even knowing who I am or what I would do with the gift of freedom. I don’t need a superhero because real and remarkable people cared.