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Hero
By Darya Viles

I want to discuss my understanding of the word “hero.” To me, a hero must be someone who lays down her life for someone else, someone who has a sense of justice, and someone who fights fear. A hero is not biased because she is capable of helping everyone she can. A hero’s willingness to help everyone comes from her inner sense of justice. Lastly, a hero is someone who overcomes her fear of the situation putting both her and the other person in danger.
A firefighter in Iran named Omid Bassi shows me how a hero is willing to lay down his life for someone else. Omid went inside a burning house to save a little girl who was trapped inside. He found her in a room full of smoke. He gave her his oxygen mask to save her instead of himself. He knew the danger of smoke inhalation, but he made the decision to help another person. He overcame his own sense of the danger of breathing in smoke, and he also had a sense that justice required that he put the little girl’s life ahead of his own. Although he saved the girl, he died.
Acts of heroism also extend beyond people. Even animals can act as heros. We see stories of cats who fight dogs three times their size to help their sick owners. The cat surely understand the danger of fighting a big dog, but the cat placed its owner’s safety ahead of its own. A school of dolphins saved a surfer named Todd from a shark. The sharks had bitten Todd, and the dolphins formed a circle around him to keep the shark from biting him anymore. The dolphins maintained their fence of protection until paramedics came to help Todd.
Heroes are kind. They let their sense of justice guide their actions and decisions to place someone else’s safety before their own. Heroes are neither arrogant nor biased, and they know how to do brave things even if they are afraid. They don’t let fear of their personal safety paralyze them from helping someone else. Heroes push their fear aside because their sense of justice is so strong that they are able to lay down their lives for someone else.