By Lisabet Sarai
Last
week the world witnessed a startling
feat of heroism, when Malian immigrant Mamoudou Gassama climbed
four stories up the side of an apartment building to rescue a toddler
dangling from a balcony.
According
to the twenty-two year old young man, he reacted instinctively,
scaling the building without stopping to think about the
implications. Indeed, if he’d paused to consider the possible
consequences, he might not have taken action. Not only did he risk
injury and death, but also, because he was residing illegally in
Paris, his highly visible activities were guaranteed to alert the
authorities to his existence. His story ended happily—the French
government (rather hypocritically, considering their general policy
toward migrants) gave him immediate citizenship—but it could have
had a far different conclusion.
Stories
like Gassama’s always make me feel a little bit better about
humanity. I wish the media did more to celebrate the everyday heroes
who put aside their own best interests to help others. There are more
of these people than we realize; they just express their heroism in
somewhat less spectacular ways than the guy whom the tabloids have
christened “Spiderman”. I’m awed, for instance, by the people
who work with Doctors
Without Borders, providing medical and humanitarian services in
conflict zones where they are as much targets as the individuals they
serve. Or for an even quieter type of heroism, consider the millions
of people who devote themselves to the health and well-being of the
severely disabled—not
just professionals (though their day-in, day-out service is also
heroic), but ordinary folks whose children, siblings or parents can’t
survive without them.
I
have a three-year old cousin who was born with SMA (Spinal
Muscular Atrophy), a genetic neuromuscular disorder that leads to
gradual paralysis and (usually) early death. His parents are my
personal heroes. They’ve reorganized their lives to give little D
not just the medical support he needs, but also to make his childhood
as normal as they can. Last year, the whole family (D has a seven
year old brother) took a trip to Disneyland, despite the fact that D
is confined to a wheelchair and has to wear an oxygen mask because
his lung muscles are too weak to let him breathe.
“That’s
family,” you might say. “Everyone takes care of their own blood.”
Aside from the fact that there are many dedicated caregivers who work
with unrelated individuals, does that make the actions, the
dedication, the sacrifice, worth any less? Not to me, at least.
Although
sometimes it seems that society has become totally selfish and
self-centered (think about the billions of dollars spent on devices
to capture and “share” trivial self-portraits), altruism is a
fundamental
human characteristic, one that is not sufficiently acknowledged.
It flows, I believe, from the unconscious knowledge that we are all
connected. I don’t think it’s an accident that last week’s
Spiderman comes from a traditional culture where family and community
are given higher value than in individualistic Western societies. I
don’t have any data, but I’d bet that instances of heroism like
this are more common in more sparsely populated rural or agricultural
areas, where people tend to know their neighbors, than in crowded,
anonymous cities.
Superheroes
are all the rage these days. Traditional comic book characters are
being resurrected and reshaped for the twenty first century. From
what I can see, though, these characters are more occupied with
egotism and inter-personal conflicts than with truly helping the
powerless. In today’s typical superhero film, the so-called heroes
have no qualms about destroying vast swathes of public infrastructure
in their pursuit of the so-called villains. Civilians become
collateral damage in a clash of super-powered titans.
Entertaining?
Maybe, but I wouldn’t label that as heroism.
Real
heroes aren’t necessarily as flashy. But they’re all around us,
if we look. Including when we look in the mirror.
