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Most people, most organisations, most countries, most civilisations bumble along merrily enough in their day-to-day lives most of the time.

People love their families, make a bit of money, raise their children, have a few vacations, polish their cars and weed their gardens.

But this luxury, this privilege, has almost always been hard earned.

At some point, people step out of their comfortable lives to fight, to protest, to struggle and sometimes to die - not for their own gain or comfort but for the future of others, for their families, their community, their country.

Tyranny

Only then, because they stood and fought, sacrificed and sometimes died, can the community, the country and their friends and families settle back into the peacefulness of their daily lives.

Civilisation is nice and comfortable but only if it refuses to yield to tyranny and chaos.

There has been much well-intentioned discussion on the long-term causes of gun violence in Bermuda.

The problem is that long-term problems require long-term fixes.

We need to reform education, improve family structures, provide better communities for young people to grow up in, remove inequality in our society, eradicate drugs and do a better job of stopping guns from getting into the country.

But we cannot wait that long. We cannot even afford to wait until the police get better at preventing and solving gang-related crimes.

You can see the rate at which people are being killed.

Lives are being filled with fear and our community is being torn apart.

Besides, these things will never work without us.

No matter how and when we solve the long-term problems, no matter how brilliant our detectives become, it will still be up to ordinary people to step forward and do the right thing.

We need people who are caught up, willingly or accidentally, in the violence and fear destroying our country to step forward, take the risks and bring it to an end. Our country is desperately depending upon young people who have been caught up in gangs, ordinary people with friends, relatives or acquaintances who are destroying Bermuda through their crimes, jurors selected at random and simply trying to do the right thing and accidental witnesses simply trying to live their daily lives.

It is often hard, as the bullets fly in Bermuda's gang wars, to know who are the heroes and who are the villains. To know who is sacrificing and standing up courageously and who is simply paying the violent price for their own gangster lives.

But it is completely clear that this tragic mess cannot possibly end until ordinary people stand up and do heroic things - people who have done no wrong and deserve no harm, who have families to protect and lives to lead and futures to dream about.

It is a lot to ask but there is no other way.

This is the way it has always been.

The ordinary soldier fighting the Nazis didn't wait for his queen, his president or local MP to sort things out on his behalf.

Nelson Mandela did not say that it was up to others to fight apartheid, he had a law practice to run.

Members of the Progressive Group did not just go to the movies and eat popcorn.

Famous

They did not say that they did not cause the racism and segregation, why should they risk so much to fix it, or that they had kids to protect and mortgages to be paid.

You do not have to be famous to be a hero. Most are not.

After a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing, our first regular National Heroes Day is just over a month away, on June 21.

The national heroes Bermuda needs this year are not politicians but ordinary, brave Bermudians.

These are the only people who can save our country. They are our only possible national heroes.

Not queens or governors, premiers or police commissioners. It is us.

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