Blood.
Our school ran a winter blood drive today, which was run out of the gym by the junior varsity basketball team because they wanted it to be ready in time to practice. A BLOOD DRIVE...which has the opportunity to SAVE PEOPLE'S LIVES...was deemed inferior in importance to that of a JV basketball practice, and dozens of participating blood donors TURNED AWAY. Think about that. Donors told that their contribution to humanity is less important than a sports practice. It makes me furious.
I asked several kids if they were donating blood. No one in all of my classes felt the need to. Intelligent, involved people replied "It's my blood, not somebody else's - it's gonna stay in my body!" This is a diseased thinking. If your blood can, without harm to you, provide for the life of another, it is no longer your blood. It is the communal blood of a people who are subservient in their very lives to the will of nations who proclaim themselves to be first and foremost established for the common good of mankind. To withhold that is like holding in unnecessary breath simply so that someone else couldn't breathe it instead. It's not that I ascribe to slicing up your body while alive for its parts, but I do ascribe to the idea that what doesn't even hurt you that can benefit another is not yours, but theirs.
That simple, apathetic and injurious action sparked something in me that I didn't know was there and a force of conviction that I didn't know I had. I actually feel the compulsion to do something about waking people up to bigger realities within the world. Even though I'm by no means educated myself, I want other people to feel that spark of hot anger that I just felt, and I want them to feel that need to do something. Maybe they - or me - will.
I asked several kids if they were donating blood. No one in all of my classes felt the need to. Intelligent, involved people replied "It's my blood, not somebody else's - it's gonna stay in my body!" This is a diseased thinking. If your blood can, without harm to you, provide for the life of another, it is no longer your blood. It is the communal blood of a people who are subservient in their very lives to the will of nations who proclaim themselves to be first and foremost established for the common good of mankind. To withhold that is like holding in unnecessary breath simply so that someone else couldn't breathe it instead. It's not that I ascribe to slicing up your body while alive for its parts, but I do ascribe to the idea that what doesn't even hurt you that can benefit another is not yours, but theirs.
That simple, apathetic and injurious action sparked something in me that I didn't know was there and a force of conviction that I didn't know I had. I actually feel the compulsion to do something about waking people up to bigger realities within the world. Even though I'm by no means educated myself, I want other people to feel that spark of hot anger that I just felt, and I want them to feel that need to do something. Maybe they - or me - will.