Casting Call For Heroes
“Where to from here?”
is the question that I always ask. Not every one asks, as many are content to remain where they presently are. Why the difference?
Upbringing is often mentioned as the decisive factor in the orientation of the individual. What about upbringing? Why not include the physical and emotional upbringing of one’s parents, and the grandparents, receding into past generations?
Much is subject to chance, a flip of the coin. A settled daily routine may be upended. Your life can change in a New York minute — a cancer diagnosis, a car accident that disables, etc. In the face of disaster — habit yet leaves very deep ruts. Not even a trauma can change ingrained habits of mind.
So how is it that some push for advance, for running the rapids, for venturing life and limb for the unknown that comes with real risk? Others will remain moored to the dock, immobile, and resist any suggestion that they set a course for the unknown. They will marshal their reserves to defend their “right” to remain where they are, as they are, even to the death.
The truth is that heroism may be the only way to love. Now, heroism cannot be preached, it has only to show itself, and its mere presence may stir others to action. For heroism itself is a return to movement, and emanates from an emotion — infectious like all emotions — akin to a creative act.
— excerpt from The Two Sources of Morality And Religion by Henri Bergson p. 53
