When heroism is a way of living then, every action is an opportunity for building an ideal.
Integrity to an ideal implies that – whatever be your ideal – each task is one more opportunity to reach the ideal. The profundity of one’s approach to day-to-day life is what is important. To another person an interaction is just another conversation, but to the heroic mind, every interaction is about shaping the mind to the ideal.
Every conversation becomes a battlefield – of clarifying what am I really saying? What does this mean in the light of my ideal? What do I stand for? The hero does not live life pragmatically. He or she does not say, “let’s compromise and move forward”. For the hero, every action has to be such that the highest ideal reveals itself.
So, there is a profound difference between a ‘pragmatic’ view and the view of ‘looking at one’s life as a shaping towards an ideal’.
The hero’s stance to life is that every moment is a moment of truth. ‘Every moment in my life I will be conscious of my highest ideal and struggle to live it’.
To such an individual, life is not a battle with others or with circumstances. The real battle is a battle of the mind – of reshaping of the mind towards the ideal. Thus, heroism is about shaping your own responses and reassessing yourself – that reshaping of the mind, untwisting it, getting it ready – all the while retaining integrity to one’s own ideal.
The hero says: Whatever be the cost, whatever be the circumstance, whatever be the energy and the effort – I have to live the ideal and I have to struggle to live the ideal in every small part of my day-to-day life.
Yet, a hero is always willing to change one’s own point of view, willing to listen – as long as it is a step closer to the ideal.
It is this willingness to transmute oneself through every single encounter with life that enables such heroes to realize their ideal.
