Michael F. DuBois

Every once in a while, among all the stories of death, hate, jealousy and corruption, we see a rare story of hope on the news.

SAVED.

Somebody uses their wealth for something positive, risks their life for another, a hero is born. I am very proud when these stories come on the news, or even in the news paper, for I know that it reminds people that there is still some good left in the world. However my question is, are the ones on the news the only people that are heroes? People only feel “saved” when they know something was harming them. People only feel like a “hero” when they can see the outcome. Are people still survivors, still heroes, even if they never knew they were involved?

What I believe, is that we are all hero’s. We all make decisions in our lives, and with every decision we make, we will someday affect another person in some way.

On February 5th, 1784, a woman named Nancy Hanks was born. A normal woman, born just as any other person in the world, a woman that I am sure never considered herself a hero. On June 12th, 1806, she married and later had two children. On October 5th, 1818, Nancy Hanks died at the age of 34. What she did not know, what she did not get to see, was that years later her son, Abraham Lincoln, would sign the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, the first in a set of events that would lead to the ending of slavery in The United States of America. I am guessing that throughout her life, just as any person, Nancy felt sadness, heartbreak, happiness, love, saw destruction, death, the building of a world and the birth of lives. What I am sure of, however, is that while feeling and seeing all of these things throughout her life, every choice that she made eventually led her to marry Thomas Lincoln and to the birth of her son, Abraham. She made choices throughout her life, she made decisions, all of which put her on a path that led to the birth of the man who would begin the end of slavery. Although she died when her son was nine, never seeing him put his beliefs into action, she was nevertheless a hero for the decisions she made that led her to the day when she gave birth to her son. Without realizing it, Nancy Hanks single-handedly affected the lives of millions of people with just the simple everyday decisions that she made throughout her life. And further, without the ending of slavery, more people may not have been able to make certain everyday decisions throughout their lives that would eventually lead to the coming together of people and the birth of the great artists and thinkers of our time today, and more to be born in the future. Every choice that we make, no matter how small it may seem, will someday affect the entire world in ways that we will never know. We are all saved, every single day, by the choices that are made by the ones we live with now and those who have lived before our time, just as we save the ones around us as well.

So, with every choice that you make, take a minute and follow your heart, because someday, good or bad, it will go on to affect millions of people, and will continue to, forever in time. We all affect this world by the choices we make, and someday, if we stay true to our hearts, we may just change the world.