A Real Hero

The funny thing about heroes is that they usually aren't. Take any popular hero, scratch the surface, and one typically finds a lot of flaws. Which probably says more about our human tendency to oversimplify and exaggerate than it does about the hero herself. More than anything, a hero strikes me as an ordinary person who does something extraordinary in a moment of crisis, or, on a more basic level, simply does the right thing under extraordinary duress.

Don't get me wrong: I still like heros. Long for them. Idealize them. Celebrate them. Though I suppose my view of what constitutes a hero has changed over time. These days I'm less impressed by the brave soldier who goes down in a hail of bullets than the cancer patient who faces his diagnosis and treatment with grit, determination, and a sense of humor.

But here's a hero I think we might all agree on: Eric Liddell (photo above), the "Flying Scotsman," who took the gold medal in the 400 meters at the 1924 Paris Olympics after choosing not to run in his best race--the 100 meters--because the qualifying heat was scheduled on a Sunday.

While the movie "Chariots of Fire" popularized that part of his story, I was even more impressed by the untold story of Eric Liddell--the story of what happened after the Olympic games.

In short, he returned as a missionary to China, showed grace, courage, and compassion to a lot of people during the Japanese occupation, and died in an internment camp in 1945 at the relatively young age of 43, after giving up his opportunity for an early release to an expectant mother. One of his fellow prisoners described him as "as the finest Christian gentleman it has been my pleasure to meet. In all the time in the camp, I never heard him say a bad word about anybody."

That's my kind of hero. I'm sure he wasn't perfect, but he seems like an awfully good guy. Three cheers for Eric Liddell.

(Photo and other general information available on Wikipedia (as well as many other websites) at the following address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Liddell.)