I am super behind on my Marvel movie watching, let’s just get that out of the way. I’m trying to have more fun, though, and not focus so much on being productive all the time. So I’m doing what I always do when I need to make a change in my life. I use my bullet journal.
I’ve got this whole list of movies I want to watch in my bullet journal, and I’m trying to get to them one by one. That’s how we finally ended up watching Deadpool.
It was a great movie, I absolutely loved it. Please be aware, it’s hugely inappropriate. Like, I’ve never seen a movie so inappropriate. This is, in big bold letters, not a movie intended for children!
I will probably do a blog post eventually about doing vulgar, sex and violence well, but that’s for another day. What I want to talk today about is this one speech right near the end of the movie. This speech from Colossus is fairly well known at this point. I’ll paraphrase it here, but here’s a link to the full thing.
Being a hero isn’t a twenty-four hour, lifelong thing. Usually, it comes down to just the decisions you make in just four or five minutes.
This just struck me as so true! But it’s not, not really.
There will be moments in our lives when we are called upon to do heroic things. Some friends of mine and I had such an incident when I was at summer camp. A fellow camper passed out during a hike, and we had to two-person carry her out of the woods. I don’t say this to brag. There was another camper and two adult leaders with us. It was a team effort, but I was proud to be part of that team. I also don’t say this to brag, because I’m sure that you have a story like that. If you’re a police officer, doctor, firefighter or EMT you have stories like that every day.
But being a hero isn’t always about these big, life or death moments. Sometimes it’s just being a good person.
It’s not the decisions we make in those 4 or five minutes that show who we are. It’s our everyday decisions.
People who help out a stranger who’s short at the coffee shop.
People who help their neighbors take something heavy to their car.
People who pick up trash, even if it’s not theirs.
People who are patent with older people, and other people’s kids.
People who mow their neighbor’s grass, instead of calling the city when it gets too high.
People who don’t judge others about their parenting, housework, yard work, day jobs, hobbies, or really any other lifestyle choice that doesn’t harm anyone else.
While this is important to keep in mind for your everyday life, it’s also important to remember when you’re writing a character.
It’s likely that your main character will have many huge moments where they’ll have to be brave on a grand scale. Their lives will be in danger, and they must risk themselves to save others. That comes up in almost every book.
What we as writers should remember, is that while these moments are defining, they aren’t the only ones. How a character acts towards her fellow man every day will often show more of who they are, and what sort of hero they are than any heroic four or five minutes.
Seven pieces of short and flash fiction, showcasing the days of seven very different people. 
You will find a busy librarian, a lonely man with a guitar and a woman who finds a dream crashing in her brain.
Paper Beats World 
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