Everyday Heroes

I recently found a small paperback in a used-books store along V. Gullas Street, a short distance from The FREEMAN offices. The only thing that initially interested me about it was the title — Creative Living for Today. The rest of it was unappealing; it looked old and quite worn out.

As I began to browse the pages, however, the book turned out to be a treasure. It was by Dr. Maxwell Maltz, the same medical doctor and cosmetic surgeon who wrote the bestsellers Psycho-Cybernetics and The Magic Power of Self-Image Psychology. These two other works were groundbreaking in their proposition that a healthy self-image is always at the core of one’s experience of success and happiness.

His other books contain accounts of Dr. Maltz’s personal encounters with good-looking people who had sought cosmetic surgery because they felt themselves ugly. In Creative Living for Today, Dr. Maltz shares a particularly interesting story, in his usual easy-to-understand style and language. This one, as all others told in his books, is a true story.

A young man was hospitalized with a severe disease. He could have died from it. But he was lucky enough to have recovered partially, although he remained very weak and sickly.

This patient was formerly of good physical build and full of energy. He had a good number of friends, who visited him frequently at the hospital. Naturally, the sight of him pale and shrunken made his friends sad.

One day, to everyone’s surprise, the young man would not see visitors anymore. Seeing his friends made him envy their health and vitality, his doctor explained. Their visits made him feel depressed all the more. 

For days and days, apathy and hopelessness crushed the man. He didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone or the whole world itself. All he did was wallow in his own misery.

Things only began to change when his day nurse told him about a lady patient in the next room, who was suffering emotionally. The nurse asked if the young man could write a short kind note for the lady, to lift her spirits. He didn’t seem to care.

The nurse persisted and, through her subtle maneuvering, the young man eventually gave in. He wrote the lady patient a note, and then another, and another. His innate humanity was awakened as he pictured in his mind a lonely lady in need of someone to reach out to her.

The young man felt real pleasure in writing those letters to his imaginary friend. He was still too frail to visit her in her room but, he wrote to her, when they would be both well, perhaps they could meet and take walks in the park together. Life began to bubble up again for the young man, and his health began to improve.

When the day came for him to be discharged from the hospital, the young man asked the nurse which room his lady friend was in. He wanted to see her before he left. The nurse could not give a room number — there was no such lady patient. 

It was all a trick the nurse thought of as a way to pull the young man out of his gloom and his physical illness. She did it in order to bring him a gleam of hope, a sense of purpose to his dreary days. And, indeed, he had found a purpose – an opportunity to give to a fellow patient, a fellow sufferer.

There is great joy and satisfaction to be found in having a purpose and fulfilling it, especially in giving what someone most needs. That someone may not be someone else; the very first ones to benefit from our compassionate and heroic deeds are often our own selves. For it is true that in sharing someone’s troubles we tend to forget our own.

The world is filled with heroes or, at least, opportunities for heroism. We know it when we open ourselves to be touched, to be warmed, and to be inspired to touch and warm others. The little acts of kindness or service to others that we do may not always be intentional; sometimes they are only incidental. Just the same, they can yield beautiful outcomes.

The store that sold that worn-out book was probably not intending to change anyone’s view of things. More than anything, it was perhaps merely doing business for monetary profit. And the original owner of the book might not have parted of it for the noble reason of sharing to others the great ideas he himself had found in it. He might have simply wanted to get rid of the old thing.

That store sold cheap but useful books (I bought my paperback for only 12 pesos), while it could have used its space for high-priced merchandise. The book’s original owner could just have thrown it to the garbage, but he chose to bring it to the used-books store, instead. Not only did he save the city’s trash pile from growing by half an inch, he also saved the good book for me.

Heroism does not always mean ultimate sacrifice; it doesn’t need to be a huge act. Sometimes it happens on the fringes of something else, when we’re doing trivial, everyday tasks thoughtfully and in the best ways we can. Any one of us can be a hero, in our own little ways.

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