User blog:Taldin/Heroics

(Thoughtful Thursday post; slightly delayed. I'm actually taking some time off from work, so I'm not at my desk to be inspired.)

Heroics is often defined as 'going above and beyond what a normal person would do in a similar situation.' Choosing the harder choices, sacrificing of the self for the benefit of others, taking a risk against bad odds, those sort of things.

Heroics is supposed to be something extraordinary. And yet to the heroes themselves, the extraordinary is part of their normal routine.

We can choose to be heroic, or we can choose to be ordinary. A part of the allure of being on Habitica is that ability to turn the ordinary chore that would be a heroic feat for some of us into an incentivized thing. Finding multiple reasons to do things, like, say, scrub the tub. Or clean the toilet.

And yet there are folks who do this for a living. Every night there is a small cleaning staff of about five people who clean hundreds of offices, vaccuum three two-story buildings, and wash about thirty toilets. Every single day. I see them because I work late a lot; they probably don't get paid anywhere close to what the folks whose offfices they clean without complaint. There are emergency services folks who are invisible and irrelevant to you until the moment you need them, and then you have to have them there right now.

But then again, think about the friends and family who have been there when you needed them the most. Folks who give up things they want every single day, so you don't go wanting -- your parents. Friends who dropped everything to come bring you a pizza because you were broke. Or picked you up on the side of the road because your car died and you were stranded.

Heroics comes in so many flavors, and yet we only see the most grandiose of heroism; the kind that saves lives. Our ordinary lives, and the things people do when they don't have to? Are chores, or favors, or things done to be nice to someone else.

When realistically -- everything can be heroic as a deed if you see it that way.

I have a strange custom I practice. Instead of waiting for the custodian to come by my office and pick up my trash can, as soon as I hear them, I pick up my own trash and find them, dump my trash in their rolling cart, and tell them 'Thank you." Not for me, but for the fact that they're doing this and making my life a little cleaner for me and my coworkers, long since gone home. When I leave at night and I pass them in the hallway, I wish them a good night. It's treating them as people, instead of barely acknowledging them like so many other people do.

It's nowhere near enough thanks, but a little appreciation for their heroic efforts is better than nothing at all.

Heroes are all around us, if we choose to see them that way.