One of the most common responses is, “No I can’t do that!” Some other common responses that you’ll hear are, “I can’t stand needles,” “I get sick too easily,” or, my personal favorite, “I don’t get paid for it, and it’s not like there isn’t enough blood to go around. So why should I give blood?”
In the grand scheme of things, for the donor, giving blood is not a big deal. It takes a few hours of your time and then you get up, walk out the door and carry on with your life. But how many of us stop and think about the other end of the process? How many of us think about the person who needs that blood? I know I do.
I used to be one of those people who didn’t think twice about giving blood. In fact, I never thought about it at all. Until I was 14, and I became the person on the other end of the process. Before then, giving blood was such a trivial thing that I never thought about it. But it’s not. Six years ago, two people gave blood and saved my life. Giving blood doesn’t seem like such a small act anymore.
How many things do we pass over, ignore and walk by without noticing because we think they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things? Our culture is so focused on doing the least amount of work for the greatest amount of gain that we forget about the things that can actually make a difference.
I have to admit that I try not to pay attention to commercials that ask for donations for starving children. I glance away as the images of bloated stomachs and protruding rib cages travel across the screen to the sound of music that is meant to pull at your heart strings. Too often I find myself saying that if I cannot change the way something is, I might as well not even bother. I willingly allow myself to believe the lie that my small contribution will not make a difference.
Do not fall into this trap. Do not let yourself believe that you can’t make a difference. Will you be able to provide food for every starving child? No. But that does not mean you cannot give a small donation. And making a difference doesn’t always mean going on missions trips or sponsoring a child. It could be helping to carry groceries for your neighbor, it could be giving your friend $10 for a missions trip or it could be keeping someone company when they’re sick.
It doesn’t matter what you do. What matters is that you do not tell yourself you are not important enough to make a difference, and that you do it.
To this day, I still think about the fact that there are two people out there somewhere who, six years ago, sat in a chair for a few minutes and did something that they might have thought was not that big of a deal. They might not even remember the day that they gave blood. It was such a little thing that they did not bother to tuck it away in their memory, and it has slipped through the cracks. But the 14-year-old girl lying in the hospital bed didn’t think that it was such a little thing.
Isn’t that how it works most of the time? We don’t think we can make a difference in this world, but we can. We just have to realize that the little things are not so little. They actually can be life changing actions - just wrapped in small packages.
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