{"id":117,"date":"2015-02-02T17:21:44","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T17:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yourmothersvoice.com\/?p=117"},"modified":"2020-10-22T07:54:52","modified_gmt":"2020-10-22T07:54:52","slug":"celebrate-the-real-heroes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yourmothersvoice.com\/?p=117","title":{"rendered":"Celebrate the real heroes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Unknown\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are heroes out there, lots of them. This label is often given to the wrong people though. Who are your heroes in life? I want you to think about that question really hard.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, when I was pregnant with Toby, I was nominated for the local heroes award in our city. The nomination was for \u2018Teacher of the Year\u2019 and I later found out that I was nominated by a parent at the school that I worked. It was all a bit awkward for me \u2013 a person who doesn\u2019t like the limelight and certainly isn\u2019t anybody\u2019s hero.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong I was thrilled that someone thought enough of me do this, especially as it was someone who I didn\u2019t know all that well. I was also really honoured when I was awarded second place. However, I was hugely embarrassed by the title \u2018hero\u2019 that was splashed all over our local paper and the full page spread that was allocated to me. You see, I was just doing my job and doing my best at it. That was my duty as a teacher \u2013 someone who was paid well with taxpayers money. I wasn\u2019t putting myself at risk for others or suffering for my cause. One day I aspire to be a hero but I haven\u2019t managed it as yet.<\/p>\n

The media is full of it \u2013 we celebrate people for doing their job well. We celebrate sports personalities for being good at kicking a ball around. We celebrate musicians for making money out of a hobby that they love. This doesn\u2019t make someone a hero in my book. Sorry.<\/p>\n

The people who really deserve that status are the ones who you will probably never hear about. I watched a documentary the other day about men who were working to help their communities during the Ebola outbreak. Some of these men hadn\u2019t seen their families for months because they didn\u2019t want to put them at risk. When asked why they were doing it one of the workers said words along the lines of \u2018because if no-one does it everyone here will die\u2019.<\/p>\n

The sad thing was that these people were not celebrated as heroes, even though they were putting their lives at risk to protect the planet from what could be a global disaster. Why not? Maybe it was because they are African and live far away from here. If that is the case, which I suspect it is, it makes me very sad. Everyone\u2019s life should be valued equally.<\/p>\n

So when you admire someone\u2019s music, the way they play a sport or do their job, that is fine. Go ahead and admire them because that can help to shape you into something great. Just don\u2019t give them a label that means something deeper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are heroes out there, lots of them. This label is often given to the wrong people though. Who are your heroes in life? I want you to think about that question really hard. A few years ago, when I was pregnant with Toby, I was nominated for the local heroes award in our city. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,1],"tags":[52,54],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-achievements","category-uncategorized","tag-careers","tag-heroes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourmothersvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourmothersvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourmothersvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourmothersvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourmothersvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/yourmothersvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121,"href":"https:\/\/yourmothersvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourmothersvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourmothersvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourmothersvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}