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Today, I watched the subway hero interview, which made me realize that ordinary people can have heroic moments, but still were not true heroes to me.
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Hearing about Roy Benavides allowed me to see how one side of a battle views a hero. We were not told of how the Vietnamese saw him, showing that while Roy Benavides was a hero to America, he was probably seen as a monster by Vietnam. Roy Benavides was not a universal hero.
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Although I never considered Kristi Quillen to be a hero, I deeply respect her decision to give up most modern day necessities in order to help others. This self-sacrifice had me look at modern day heroes to see who else gave up something important for the greater good.
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As I not only wanted a modern hero, I also wanted an acclaimed one, I looked through the list of previous Nobel Peace Prize winners. I chose the "Peace" category as I wanted someone that used nonviolent means to accomplish his/her goal. I eventually narrowed it donw to Aung San Suu Kyi and Liu Xiaobo, two people that fit my criteria perfectly.
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I was inspired by her brave and valiant political efforts, as well as her impressive accolades, and her push to improve a flawed government in Burma.
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I decided on her autobiography, as her ideas inspired me and I did not want to read someone else's interpretation of her thoughts, but her own, unaltered, Nobel Peace Prize winning thoughts.
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Watching the Tsunami child heroes video helped me realize that naive people that do good are not heroes. They have not experienced anything truly difficult to get through.
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Each one of the videos helped to reinforce the need for a hero to possess the will to the change something for the better. The analysis of the song "Waiting on the World to Change" was especially thought-provoking, as most average people do, in fact, let someone else lead the change. It is only the heroes that start and push for the change.
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Writing this blog post helped me look back at everything I read and had me realize that most "heroes" in literature are not heroes: they are merely protagonists.
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Hearing about others' heroes showed me that there were more than just a handful of people that met my stringent requirements for being a hero.