Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.

” If you ask me, I’ll most probably give you a

different definition to this quote than anyone else, because as a human, I tend to give everything I come across a personal touch. I’ve heard plenty of versions
regarding role-models in life and none of them was wrong.
There are 7,9 billion humans on Earth, so there must be as many heroes for each of us, wheather they’re cartoon characters, television stars, older people in our
lives, with more to have achieved than us. What all these heroes have in common, is the experience they’ve gained, which is nothing but an inspiration or a
guide for us to follow when building our future selves. What we ought to do, isn’t expect heroes to come rescue us from a fallen tower, either if it’s tangible or
metaphorical, but to allow us to select what we consider to be fundamental for our growth.
I’ve grown up sorrounded by literature, in any existant form to be known, from tiny poems, to films based on books. No wonder I made the decision to begin
with a famous quote, from the one and only „man of letters in America”, as the name was given to him, which symbolizes both my connection to the literary art
and my role models.
I’ve recently read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s „A hundred years of solitude”. A heavy book, some say. I prefered not to take account of that, so called, issue and
remain undistracted. The book tells the story of several generations of the family Buendia, who lives in an insolated village, Macondo. The tragic attempt to
develop the village’s condition, leads up to an infinite circuit of solitude. The fundamental relation of connection in the book is between the setting and the
ending, that both show an image of the same family, only a hundred years apart, left in aloneness.
This brief summary of the book, contributes to my point of one’s hero. This personal example exposes my heroes: the characters in the book. Why is that? It
must be confusing why a 16 year-old girl chooses to have nonexistant being as her role models, doesn’t it? I must’ve been misunderstood. Who I truly meant
was their creator, who sacrificed pieces of his imagination to give life to such beautiful and inspirational characters. In fact, my hero must be him, through his
characters, who not only are part of a demanting, yet imaginary life, but succed in crossing the book covers in the real world.
I’ve previously mentioned the relation between the prologue and the epilogue. This is a very often used technique in literature: forming a circle-the symbol of
perfection and infinity- between these essential segments of a narration. As for the multiple heroes through life, everything comes back to ourselves. We realise
that our geniune and forever heroes can only be ourselves if we ever learn to remain strong and immovable in front of the enemies, whom we choose.
I have a feeling that, people, in general, wait for their rescuers to be by their side whenever they face an impasse and don’t realise the imposibility of that. I
mean, take a look at my example, if I were to wait for fictional characters to come with a salvation for my impediment, I’d fail the process of evolving. We
need to step up for ourselves and hold on to a solution as long as the matter is resolved. That’s what makes a 5-minute longer hero: the capacity of not giving
up.