Heroes

     There is a woman I know who is my hero.  She is teamed with the first service dog Dean and I helped train.  He is absolutely the most awesome dog.  She is an absolutely awesome human being.  She is mostly confined to a wheelchair due to mobility issues.  Her husband died after the same accident that injured her.  Her kids are now grown.  She lives alone with her awesome dog.
     Despite all this, and this is the important part:   she absolutely loves, loves, loves her life, her dog, her home, her family, her friends.  She is the most positive, funny, outgoing person I have ever met.  She is hard to keep up with.  She is a hero, although she would never admit it.
     My parents are also my heroes.  They are like Aesop's tortoise and hare.  One burns white hot and tries to be everywhere all the time, but tires out.  The other moves forward at a steadier pace.  They each march to the beat of a different dummer, but they balance each other and are imperfectly perfect together.  It took me decades to figure that out.
     There are so many heroes in our lives if we just stop to consider them.  Christopher Reeve said that "a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles."  Today's world does present overwhelming obstacles.  
     According to the dictionary a hero is someone who is brave, courageous, has strength of character.  I think it is someone who tries, and keeps on trying.  It is the effort involved that makes the hero, not necessarily the results.  Last is just the slowest winner as long as you stay in the race.
     Who are some of the heroes in your life, and why?  Think about them a while.  Meanwhile, just keep moving forward, one step after the other.  There is a Buddhist proverb that states:  "if we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep walking."

"Everything can be taken from a man or woman but one thing:  the last of human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."  Victor E. Frankl

"As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary."  Ernest Hemingway