2008 Transformation Contest

Heroes and Circumstance

It is my firm belief that the true heroes in the world are those people that do the right things through mundane times at least 90% of the time.  Mundane as in waking up and going to work every day, doing your planned workouts, not drinking and driving.  The things that make up 99% of our life are mundane.  

The grand happenings in life make for great headlines and earn well deserved praise.  Some people don’t handle the mundane well at all but rise to the grand happenings in life.  Some people are just lucky/unlucky to be in a place that requires grand effort.  For the most part it is the people that succeed 90% of the time in the mundane things in life that accomplish the grand happening.

If you talk to a soldier or Marine that has earned a medal for valor you will find that they never view themselves as heroes.  They were doing what had to be done when the situation required it to be done.  This is why every soldier and Marine is a hero.  They train and train.  They do the routine mundane things day in and day out.  When placed in a position when some great thing must be done they do it.  They do it for their brothers in arms.  They do it because it is the right thing to do.  So even if a soldier or Marine is never placed in harms way they are heroes.

The same is true for you and me.  We are heroes if we do the day-to-day things that need to be done to the best of our ability.  When we don’t skip the workout or eat that cake.   We are heroes when we cook a healthy meal for our family and get up in the morning and go to work.  It is accomplishing the ordinary 90% of the time and not the 1% extraordinary in our lives that makes one a hero.

***Warning***
Bible discussion below, skip if you would rather not hear it

There are many reasons that I believe in the veracity of the Bible.  One is that all of the Bible heroes, except Jesus, are terribly flawed human beings.  Sure, they do some great things, but they do some terrible things too.  Many of the heroes are shown messing up on some of the most basic, mundane things in life.

King David, arguably the greatest hero of the Old Testament, lusts after and takes the wife of one of his best friends and then ensures that friend is set to be killed in battle.  That is pretty despicable stuff.  Peter first boasts about being the toughest and bravest of Jesus’ followers and then promptly denies he even knows who Jesus is when the chips were down.

Other religions portray their heroes as infallible supermen.  The Bible shows men to be flawed.  This is the same for each of us today.  You can always fault Christians for being hypocrites.  That is simply because we fail to live up to the lowest level of what good Christians should be, but we try.  We endeavor to be as Christ would have us be.

I may blow it at times.  My diet might be off or I may slack on a workout.  It is my goal to fail no more than 10% of the time.  If I can do this I will succeed.  If I can do this I will be a hero.  Be a hero with me.