I was asked the other day how I identify someone as one of my “heroes”. It was a good question… Really good, actually. To tell you the truth, I’ve never really thought about it. Whenever I’ve identified someone as a “hero” to me, it’s been almost instinctive. I simply admire them and feel inspired by them. But because this isn’t a very satisfying answer, I thought I would put some elbow-grease into the question: how do I identify someone as “heroic”?

In a manner perhaps unsurprising to me, when I was asked this question, I looked over at my bookshelf, seeing the (if I’m lucky, signed) works of many of my “heroes” piled high. Who did I see? Hans Kung, Meister Eckhart, Charlie Angus, Grace Blakely, Ignatius of Loyola, Carl Rogers, Buddha, etc. Naturally, this list was biased in that it favoured those who actually wrote something, or at least have works attributed to them, and I suppose this is maybe an indictment of objectivity. I can’t pretend to be objective, after all: I’m being asked an opinion. And I suppose that opinion reflects the fact that I value people whose knowledge and experience shared with the world. If they discovered the “secret ingredient” to their various missions and vocations, they didn’t keep it to themselves.

This brings me to the other thing that was odd about my collection of heroes. Some were priests, philosophers, religious figures, activists, psychotherapists, politicians. What could these people have in common (as far as I was concerned) besides the vague trait of heroism? At the outside, I suppose I must acknowledge my biases in the selection: these are subjects that greatly matter to me, too. I care about spirituality, philosophy, mental well-being, material well-being, civic rights, and equality, etc. Needless to say, each of these were areas where my “heroes” made contributions—although I believe it was the quality of those contributions, not the fact of a contribution itself, that made them truly heroic.

Let’s go down the list quickly:

We have Hans Kung and Meister Eckhart, both theologians who made some particular contribution to Catholic theology. Kung’s was his “ecumenical theology” and the emphasis on conscience and reform within the Catholic tradition. Eckhart’s was more mystical and rooted in that kind of experience, as opposed to dogma and laws imposed from the top of the hierarchy. Both figures faced incredible push-back from Vatican authorities.

Buddha, too, differed from the religious authorities of his day, not that he faced the same kind of censorship as Eckhart and Kung. Still, he was concerned for the well-being and liberation of the human person—not unlike Charlie Angus, a politician, whose stories about his experiences in the Catholic Worker Movement in the ’80s really put thought into practice. He reminded me of Don Bosco like that, another hero of mine. And both their stories have been enlightening for me as I think about how to follow in their footsteps.

Grace Blakely, too, enlightened me with her analysis of the many problems that society faces from a political lens. She taught me to grapple with how we might change the world. Carl Rogers and Ignatius of Loyola had something to say about that, too, though theirs was from a more psycho-spiritual point of view. Instead, they got me thinking more about how I might change myself, and for the better.

So we’ve got some commonalities, but also many, many differences. And honestly, the only possible thought for why I consider these people heroes is how they embody values that I, too, hold dearly; and not only that, but they do it with conviction. Empathy, introspection, spirituality, discernment, humanism, compassion, and a desire to make the world a little kinder tomorrow than it is today.

Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list, and I have more to say about why I admire each of these figures. But I think it makes my point clear: heroism—be it our own or someone else’s—is entirely to do with how we embody our values, which reminds me of another thought I once had:

A close friend of mine and I were once, long ago, talking about The Last Airbender. We talked about how cool it would be to be able to bend the elements like they do in the show. They said that they would really put the work in, if something like that were possible. And that stuck with me: it is already possible for human beings to do many incredible things, and—when push comes to shove—is our money where our mouth is? For instance, in this context, a lot of the physical feats (minus the supernatural stuff) are not unlike qi gong and kung fu. But how many people do these things?

Of course, it can be more complicated than this, but I hope the point is clear: you don’t need to imagine that you’d do something heroic if things were possible. They are possible, at least in some sense. So do them. Be a hero. None of the heroes I mentioned wear capes or have super powers. They’re just people, like the rest of us. But, in all their humanity, they did the unthinkable: they put their money where their mouth is.