WHAT ARE the features of a hero? I was once asked. And if this question is asked of you, your answers will be more like mine.
Heroes are inspiring, decisive, unflinching, brave, courageous. A hero makes sacrifices for others and makes sure that endeavors are meant to protect others. When in distress, they are easy to call, and they come at a moment’s notice.
They come at a time when things are becoming impossible; when the tunnel of hope is getting darker, they swiftly lit up the torch for the people to follow.
And when people see that light, the body gets excited, the minds get thrilled and spirits elevated. Those are the features and the doings of a hero.
Of course, most of those I have mentioned are products of a mind wanting to move away from reality—- movie-like than practical.
The daily motions of life bring us to the highs and lows, and no one is an exception to this. Those whom we know as heroes also fought the devil inside them, which is difficult to pin down compared to the devil outside.
What is the most evil that is orchestrated in the vast arena of the mind is the intention of wealth. Such when wealth is a pursuit of the body alone, then the battle is lost. It is when the fight for wealth for everyone that the great battle of goodness and evil starts.
The great Roman orator Cato famously said “I only start when am sure that what I have to say is not better left unsaid”, a kind of guide for the good in man. Certainly, what Cato envisions as a great man, whom we call a hero today, finds support in the words of St Augustine.
He said, “A good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices”. Clearly, the ascent to wealth may oftentimes derail the good in man. But the pursuit of wealth, on its own cannot be evil.
It is the loss of the good man in the pursuit of wealth. But there are those who persistently carry the banner of a good person in the travel to prosperity such that the result of the wealth being made is the wealth of a good man.
The process and the results are good. The man is good; the wealth is good.
But more like, in the daily challenges of income-earning, spending, and saving the heroic act is made. To earn income is to work and receive payment for the services that one tenders to another. Next to a person’s meaning of family is the meaning of work.
More so, spending can be practical or offensive. Practical spending occurs when the items for most essential, the necessities, and recreational. Their share of the budget must be proportional.
Simply means, do not spend more than what one earns.
In the inverse, spending more than what one earns is offensive. It is offensive to the comforts of mind, as it rearranges the basic formula of decent accounting. When the proportionality of spending is realized, one would see that there will always be room for savings, and in fact, in savings, there are all ways.
The daily grind is the detail of where the hero is born, and the most basic in hero-making is the wealth-making of the good man, who is not a slave to the vice of work or wealth. The wealth is equal to the measure of work, and to fuels the meaningful pursuit.
