Tonight with coworker-friends, I celebrated my eight years of effort as the Donor Representative for downtown Seattle on behalf of Puget Sound Blood Center (and 11 years total with the company) and my choice now to move on to new adventures. My boss checked numbers and announced that Ive been responsible for more than 90,000 registered blood donors and creating vital blood support for as many as 250,000 humans facing existential crisis of health. How could I not shed tears at having been an agent of possibility at the moment of survival-need for a quarter million humans? And if each of those patients had just three other people who loved them (an absurdly reasonable estimate, yes?), then how can I avoid the notion that my life has profoundly touched a million others? No matter what the future unfolds for me, I can hold up every second of my life so far as having been beautifully worthwhile as a bit of path leading to this difference in the world beyond my capacity to imagine. Beyond the matter of patient survival, I see that I have been an agent of empowerment for those 100K donors who Showed Up and offered their blood as a testament to the value of their own lives. And yet, looking back on my eight years, I am most struck by how normal it seems for us to consider our presence as a shy trifle to others, barely missed when we don’t Show Up. It’s as if we think of our lives as pebbles in a pile, each easily parsed, plucked and tossed aside. Consider instead that we are drops of water falling into a sea –changing it by both our presence and a spreading ripple. The way we alter it can never be fully excised. And together, our participation can create great waves, cradle fresh life, reform the landscape and wash the world. It has become my fondest wish for us all to ‘get’ how profoundly we touch the lives of everyone around us. To honor that wish, I offer this final thought: The question is not whether, if, or how you change the world. YOU ARE HERE NOW. It is impossible to not change it. The question is: “How is the world different because I am here?” By breathing, you just changed the air. By eating, you just changed the food supply. By connecting and communicating, you just altered at least a moment in someone else’s life. By offering blood, you just declared the value of your own life –and you raised the bar for what is worthy and effective for any of us to put on the line in service to the precious and beautiful possibility of this sea of which we are a part. Thank you for being connected with me, whoever you are reading this right now. I love you and find it an honor to share this existence with you.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 04:56:49 +0000