Thursday, June 09, 2011

We Take Too Much For Granted Everyday

Alice Pyne is a 15 year old girl who knows she is running out of time. She has hopes and dreams like we all do - she would have liked to have been a dolphin trainer - but she knows that some of those things will now, in her words, "remain dreams."

I became aware of Alice yesterday when her blog went viral with her bucket list - and one of the things she wanted was to trend on twitter. For me there is something inherently human in this desire to reach out - a need to be known, to be thought of - simply to say "I'm here, I exist, I live... and there's so much stuff that I still want to do." I know to some extent we all can relate to this.

One of the items on Alice's bucket list is to "make everyone sign up to be a bone marrow donor." This is something that is simple for most of us to do and I highly recommend it. I've been on the bone marrow registry for years and I hope that one day I might be able to help someone, like Alice, to keep on working through their bucket list and to live all of their dreams. In Canada you can start the process HERE. In the United States go HERE. For everyone else, google "bone marrow donation" and your country and it should bring up the program you need.

Another thing Alice challenges us to do is consider what it is we are putting off doing and why. If something is important to the way we want to live our life then we should start making that a priority and look for the opportunities we need. We're all relatively guilty of getting bogged down in the mundane daily tasks we feel responsible to participate in and we always put things off because we will get around to them, eventually. But what happens when you run out of time? As Alice asks in her blog profile - "If today was your last day on this earth, how would you spend it?"

It's worth some time today to ponder that question, right after you sign up for the bone marrow donor program in your jurisdiction.

We are all running out of time, just most of us don't know it. Keep on dreaming, my friends.

2 comments:

Surecure said...

Thank you for posting this one.

michele said...

I've been on the bone marrow registry for a while now - was called once for extra testing but not needed in the end. But I too hope someday I can help someone.

Thanks for posting.