The Hero

Everybody wants to be a hero. As a kid he tries to put on a towel as a cape and pretend to be superman or run around on the bed calling himself he-man. But soon he will grow beyond that dream.

As adolescence comes he tries to become a hero in real life. Among friends as the guy who peers admire or as the guy all the girls secretly look at. But then he does not really achieve what really makes him feel like a hero.

He grows up and gets a job. He goes to work everyday and one day he hopes to achieve great heights. Be the corporate hero who rose from a smalltime job to a frontpage news. But then again the corporate monster chews on that dream looms larger in the sky while the guy gets sucked into the shadows.

Somewhere along the way he will fall in love. He hopes to give the girl all the love in the world. Give her the best care and hope to see in her eyes the admiration for a hero. But soon he gets married and all he will see is his wife looking at the same old face she's seen over the years. The hero dies and the husband survives.

Few more years down the line, he will have a kid. He's going to tell the kid all the stories that once made him go 'wow'. He'll see that there were a million stories he heard as a kid but only some still linger. He will take care of his kid and he hopes to see in the kids eyes the admiration he once had as a kid. I remember thinking that my father could do anything in this world. But soon his kid will grow up and see the same old nagging father he was.

One day the guy is going to stand in front of a mirror he had seen himself in. He had started combing his hair by himself in front of that mirror. He remembers shaving for the first time in front of that. He remembers looking at those irritating pimples he had. He remembers the first grey hair he had noticed. He stares at the old wrinkled man in the mirror and he finally sees...