On Monday, my nine-year old, Maritza, mentioned that she wanted to make a video entry for Disney’s uRock contest. The submission deadline was Sunday. I promised that we would do it on Friday night or Saturday.

Now, there’s a long time between Monday and Friday, so while I try to keep my promises, I can’t say that I always do. On Friday night, while joking around with Maritza and Simone, we talked about the goings on of the week. Maritza had a strange look on her face, as if she wanted to say something.

She said that she didn’t.

I brought it up a few more times, and each time she insisted that there was nothing she was holding back.

I wasn’t convinced.

Later, I remembered and rushed into her bedroom.

“I’ve got it! I know what it is. You wanted to ask about the video, right?”

She confirmed my guess.

It seems that she was worried that I was too tired from work to help her with the video.

“We’ll do it tomorrow, for sure.”

I went into Simone’s room and announced my breakthrough:

“I told you. I knew that she wanted to ask me something.”

“Congratulations,” she deadpanned.

Highly tuned perceptive qualities are rarely appreciated by the masses.

On Saturday, we worked on the 40-second video – filming, editing, rendering, previewing, and reediting. It took us several hours to complete. Maritza had full creative control of the process.

You just can’t rush show people.

Enjoy the video!

Hedge words or phrases like “perhaps”, “maybe”, or “I don’t know” have been dropped from your vocabulary long ago. Who needs them? You have uncovered all of the answers.

The doubts and fears that limit the potential of the rest of us are no longer concerns of yours. You don’t just forward forceful arguments. No, that wouldn’t be nearly enough. There can be no room for debate.

Your opinions rise to the level of certitude because, after all, there is no question that you are right.

You believe that those who disagree with you are misinformed, ignorant, lost, or worse.

You believe that all nonbelievers – the good people as well as the bad – are doomed.

You believe in a Grand Plan, and you speak as if you’ve read the unpublished manuscript.

You know that yours is the only way.

How difficult life must have been for you before you knew everything.

I have a friend who is very into her religion. She spends more time in church than I do watching baseball, which means that she’s there a lot. I accompanied her to a service once. It felt as if I had been dropped into heavenly Hillsboro of Inherit the Wind fame. There was lots of enthusiasm in that room and some in attendance were even overcome with the spirit. I had never seen that in person.

The service went on for so many hours that I no longer worried about seeming rude by getting up from my seat, so I did. I had to. I went outside for a smoke.

I’ve known my friend for over thirty years, so what she believes and how she thinks are not secrets to me. She has her beliefs and I have mine, so we move on.

We’ve had only one real falling out.

One day, we were having one of those circular discussions that occur when one side cannot even consider what the other side is saying. The discussion nearly ended when I mentioned that one of us was going to hell, or at least purgatory.

Now, I’m not what you would call a true believer. I have my views of this life and the next, but I don’t stick to the company line. There are a lot of ifs, ands, or buts in my vocabulary and even more questions. If I know anything, it’s that my questions cannot be answered by anyone walking the earth.

I’ll just have to wait and see.

And pray.

I went on to explain that the problem with everyone running around insisting that theirs is the one and only true religion is the implication that everyone else is pretty much screwed – no matter how well they’ve lived their lives.

No god that I pray to would be down with that.

Last night, I downloaded the Godfather trilogy of movies which have been bundled by iTunes. I already own these movies on VHS, but the bundle was priced at $17.99, so the remastered digital versions were too good a deal to pass up.

As I watched the first of these films, it occurred to me that with all of the bravado on display: Sonny, Sollozzo (The Turk), Luca Brasi, Don Corleone himself, and many others, one of the most courageous characters in the movie was the easily overlooked Enzo the Baker.

A sense of gratitude prompted an unarmed Enzo to place himself into a dangerous situation.

“If there is trouble, I stay here to help you. For your father. For your father.”

Enzo stood in front of the hospital with Michael and played a dangerous game of chicken, as they bluffed the gangsters who had come to finish off the Don. His trembling hands gave away his nervousness, but he did his part just the same. This was not his quarrel, yet Enzo stuck his neck out when he didn’t have to. It would have been so much easier for him to simply walk away.

In a world of skepticism and self-interest it’s gratifying to be able to recognize and appreciate the many unsung heroes that are all around us.

Among these are the providers of child care who allow parents to make a living and those who care for our elderly. The people who perform these difficult tasks are heroes to the families who employ them.

You might say that those are just jobs, but they are more than that, and they should be valued accordingly.

If I do my job technically correctly, financial reports are in balance, but if I see my job in terms of how I can impact others, there’s much more that I can do. If the custodians of our very young and our very old perform their jobs in a caring manner, we’ll know that our loved ones are safe and secure, so we can turn my attentions to other matters.

In all of our interactions with others, we can choose whether to be detached or involved, closed or open, or annoyed or cheerful. The choices that we make determine how we view the world and how the world views us. Everyone can be a hero in his or her own way. Wearing a cape or a mask is optional.

There are many other jobs that fit into the unsung hero category: EMTs, teachers, police officers, and doctors. Those are the obvious ones, but there are other, more obscure, choices: road workers, waiters, maintenance workers, truck drivers, and crossing guards to name a few.

The list is endless.

Whatever it is that we do for a living, we can approach our days as if there is a little bit of Enzo the Baker in all of us. In all of our relationships, we can choose to take chances and not just play it safe. We can view our actions as interconnected bits that shape our experiences and the experiences of others.

Millions of heroes, each making small contributions, can be more effective than any single superhero, if superheroes actually existed.

So go ahead, step up to your next opportunity and show me your Enzo.

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Who are the unsung heroes in your life?
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