Dr's In: I know who my heroes are!

We make too much out of sports figures. Rarely a week goes by that some boxer, bicyclist, or professional football player isn’t tagged with one scandal or another.  Our fascination with the “A List”, movie stars, and drugged out musicians never made any sense, especially when we see them hawking some product or speaking for one issue or another that they know little about.  We too often are seeing their arrest photos parading before us.

Our real heroes are overlooked, ignored, and unknown.  Once in a long while we get a glimpse of a real hero.  They look like us, not too handsome, overweight, obscure figures working in insignificant jobs, invisible to all but a few close family and friends.  We get a glimpse but then fall back on old habits.  Such a person is Antoinette Tuff.  She’ll never hit 60 home runs, shoot 62 on the golf course, be seen as a siren on the big screen; she’ll just go about her daily business.  That may be difficult for her now for singlehandedly she protected a school full of children and staff.  She confronted her worst nightmare, stayed cool, and everyone survived.  She didn’t have a gun or pepper spray or wore a black belt.  She simply talked to a deranged potential killer and held fast to her faith.

I have a wall in my room where I post real heroes and none of them are found in the movies, or on athletic fields, or playing hard metal music. Antoinette Tuff is now on my wall, she is affixed near Ann Frank, Father Kapaun (Google him), a nun who lived with lepers, and a number of others who show just what we can accomplish.  What did Admiral Halsey say, “There are no great men, just great challenges which ordinary men, out of necessity, are forced by circumstances to meet.”  The same might be said of heroes.

Yet, we will continue to be awed by the likes of Lindsey Lohan,  Alex Rodriguez, Tiger Woods, Mick Jagger; the list is long.  We will ignore the real heroes that go to work every day, keep their families together, stay tough through hard times, and continue to set a quiet example of who we are and who we can be.  I am not a religious guy but I am convinced that those real heroes are the reason why God puts up with us.

My suggestion would be to forget focusing on your child being the next Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, Cher, or Justin Timberlake. Why not take a look at those kids in the High School band, for example.  Nobody pays much attention to their hard work other than their parents. Yet, they are typically the smartest, most hardworking, and accomplished students in school.  I look at those kids for my heroes.