Live Action Heroes

I am a sucker for sports movies and movies where the good guys triumph over insurmountable odds to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Within each of these movies is a message that is as heaven sent as a newborn baby. We aren't alone and we can achieve.

Life wasn't meant to be an exercise in perfection. Instead, it was meant to be raw and gritty and cause people to rise above their circumstances to reach just a little higher and draw from their inner reserves just a bit deeper. Life requires a broad wingspan and the willingness to deploy those wings in a gale force wind.

Movies where the dogs rescue the people, or themselves, are certainly on my watch list.

Within the genre of hero movies, anything that requires us to suspend our disbelief is worth my time. Our lives are so filled with the 'have to's' and 'must accomplish before nightfall' that the energy and pleasure I get from seeing a program that brings the battered hero home is heart warming and emotional in ways that other things simply aren't.

Teddy Roosevelt once said, "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strikes valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

I believe that to be a truth of the highest caliber. That is why we rejoice with the hero when he wins and cry when the struggle makes the hero wonder if he can achieve that moment of triumph.

We need more of the heroes in our world and a whole lot less of the saturation of that which neither lifts nor encourages. Instead, we need a steady diet of what we can do both when the chips are up and when they are totally down.

Your prescription for the day: Go watch a movie about a hero and bask in the warm glow of knowing that no matter how long it takes, or the obstacles and sacrifices required to do it, eventually good will triumph over evil, right will defeat wrong, and the good guy will come out on the top of the heap.