This article first appeared here.
I love the video below created by IsraelLife about three roommates (wait until the end for the third!) making Guided Aliyah with Nefesh B’Nefesh. In today’s world of Israel-bashing college kids and Jews who are either scared to show their Jewishness or embarrassed by it, these are proud Jews and proud Zionists.
But above all, I love this video for something that happens at minute 1:14 (or so). Eli Wiesel (can you believe that’s his name?) says,
“Can I be my own hero? Because right now I’m my own hero.”
Wow. How many of us, in our entire lives, ever see ourselves as our own heroes? This line knocked me off my feet.
I completely understand what he is saying; making Aliyah really is heroic. So is following your dreams.
It got me to start thinking. When am I my own hero? Could I be my own hero more often?
Are you your own hero?
Could you become your own hero sometime soon?
What would it take to be your own hero?
2018 has just begun, and people around the world tend to take this time to define goals for the new year. What if their only goal – if the goal that we all had for ourselves each day, week, month and year – was to be our own hero?
What does this mean? I can’t say, for you, what it means. It could mean running a marathon, calling your grandmother every week even though she lives far away and she nags, getting that last child to learn to ride a bike, learning more Torah, balancing your checkbook this month with no overdraft, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, learning to dance, asking that guy on a date, flying for the first time, overcoming your fear of swimming, traveling to the place of your dreams, buying a home, saving for retirement, making your kids smile, dancing at your son’s wedding, just making it through the day, switching jobs, helping your autistic child to make a friend, meeting a friend for dinner, saying sorry, folding all the laundry, completely ignoring the laundry for a day, relaxing with a bottle of wine…
The list is endless. The possibilities are there.
How much better would we become, would the world become, if we each awoke each morning with the goal of being our own heroes today, this week, this month, this year?
Imagine the never-ending possibilities and then make them true.
