what makes a hero?

books are always talking about heroes. when teachers force their students to analyze literature (one of the worst tortures humans can inflict on eachother) they often ask who the hero in a story is. What defines someone as a hero? what does the word "hero" mean? is somebody born a hero? can one gain a trait of heroism? is one a hero every day of his life, or does one only become one depending on the situation?
is a hero somebody who changes the world? i don't think so, because anyone can change the world. if you would go to the beach right now, and move one grain of sand one inch from where it originally rested, you've just changed the world from the way it was before you came along. is a hero someone who changes the world on a broader scale? maybe. Colombus definitely changed the world, but few people define him as a hero, or even as a good person. is a hero someone who changes the world for the better? if that's the case, then there's precious few heroes in the history of mankind, because there has been very few incidents in which somebody changed the whole world for the better.
is a hero someone who changes just a few people's lives for the better? makes others into better people? then almost everybody in the world is a hero, because most people are good and try to help others, right?
Let's look at somebody who most people think of as a hero. Hmm. How about Moses? he was definitely a hero, everybody agrees on that. who's a bigger hero than Moses, the man who led the Jews from slavery? when Moses was born, his face was shining. all sorts of other miracles happened for the infant Moses as well. it was almost as if, from the second he was born, he was designated to be a hero. it was his destiny. nobody could expect less from a baby who refused to drink gentile milk when he was only three months old!
Does this mean that i can't be Moses? i can't be as great a hero, no matter how hard i try? i mean, sure, it's all up to the individual and all that. but the fact remains that my face wasn't shining when i was born. if my mom would've put me in a box and sent me down a river, i almost certainly wouldn't have survived. i would never be able to tell the difference between Kosher and non-kosher as a newborn. Moses's destiny was all laid out for him, it seems. i guess, theoretically, he could've chosen a different path. he could've decided not to become the great man that he was. but still, it seems as if he were...born great.
is a hero somebody that inspires you to be the best that you can possibly be? that's what i think. though my Moses question still hasn't been answered, this seems to be a good definition of the word "hero". maybe a hero isn't someone who saves the world from disaster. maybe a hero isn't someone who saves a thousand people from certain doom, or even saves one person from certain doom. maybe a hero isn't somebody who fights evil, wearing a mask and a cool cape. maybe a hero isn't necessarily somebody who's famous, somebody who everybody knows. maybe a hero isn't somebody who people sing about in ballads, or are written about in epic poems, or are talked about in stories, or those people who everybody recognizes when they walk down the street.
Maybe a hero is somebody smaller, yet much, much bigger. maybe a hero is somebody who touches your soul. who you never, ever forget. somebody who, when you think of him, makes you feel a little stronger inside, and a lot less alone. somebody who's not necessarily famous. somebody who isn't especially great, isn't "larger-than-life". a hero is just somebody who, in one way or another, inspires.
i have many heroes. my family. my friends. people who i hope to see soon, and people who I've never seen at all, and people who I'll probably never seen again. but all of them are just that- people. people with something inside of them that inspires me to be the best i can possibly be.
my heroes are the people who refuse to give up hope. the people who find light in the darkness. the people who make sacrifices- who give up what's important to them for the ones they love.
some of these people i know personally. others are long gone, and I've heard stories of them. either way, these are the people i wish to be like. this is one of my main goals, one that i don't yet know how, or if, i can fulfill. but it's something that i think everybody wants to be. what i know i want desperately to become.
A Hero.