What Makes a Hero

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall.” 

Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948)

My youngest daughter [12yo] & I returned from a trip to the city for dentistry. We'd done some pretty decent tooth healing on one of her adult teeth but still it remained too soft to be left be as formed improperly. She dislikes needles so she had her filling without anaesthesia, just giving us occasional pain scores out of 10 [3/10 mostly]. She dealt with substantial pain in the past and is rock hard! She also trained for jujitsu and was pretty unbeatable. She has a tranquil surety about her and walked away from the dentists chair empowered rather than traumatised.

When we got home we found this excellent TedEd lesson on creative writing [a secret love of mine] about the universal structure of hero tales across cultures. Have fun spotting the stages of the tale in your favourite movies and books or in your own life!

It struck a chord with me due to the current climate we are dealing with as homeopaths in the UK. Then I remembered the quote by Ghandi, which buoyed me up in 2009 when we were undergoing a similar media vilification as home educators in the UK.

Just like my 12 year old, as patients & health practitioners we need to find our antifragility.

Antifragility is a property of systems that increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures. [Nassim Nicholas Taleb's concept].