Celebrating our lifeblood
SIDRA KRANZ MOSHINSKY
IN case it’s over before you even knew it had begun, 2009 is Year of the Blood Donor, so deemed by the federal Government. It appears to have passed unnoticed by many.
The current year actually carries quite a load. On an international level, the United Nations, apparently unable to choose, declared 2009 the International Year of Reconciliation, the International Year of Natural Fibres and the International Year of Astronomy.
Twinning years with particular agendas is a good idea in theory, providing a means of giving sometimes neglected but worthy causes a stronger place in public awareness. Overuse, however, can turn the concept into a farce. Last year, for example, was the International Year of the Potato, of Planet Earth, of Sanitation and of Languages. Too many! And too prosaic.
I do love the humble spud, happy to eat it mashed or roasted, cheese on top or toasted, but the notion that it merits recognition at an international level, up there with human rights, peace, youth and eradication of poverty, makes a mockery of the whole system.
But back to the blood donor. It is 80 years since blood was first collected in Australia and now more than half-a-million people give blood on an annual basis.
According to the Red Cross, one in three Australians will need blood sometime in their lives, but only one in 30 people currently donate.
Most of the blood donated goes towards helping people with cancer and blood diseases, with two per cent used for trauma and road accidents.
In order to meet demand, the blood bank needs 26,000 donations every week. The giving and receiving of blood has not been without its share of challenges and controversies over the years, as newly discovered diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and Mad Cow (Creutzfeldt-Jakob), precipitate the need for more sophisticated screening and expose the blood bank to litigation.
In an age when greed is decreed good and “it’s all about me” is the slogan of the moment, it is quite remarkable that more than 500,000 people across the country take time out to donate blood.
And while the free bickies and milkshakes at the end are nice, they’re hardly the drawcard.
A sense of civic duty, wanting to give back to the community, and perhaps knowing someone who needs or has needed (or will need — all of us potentially) a blood transfusion are just some of the many reasons that lead people to give.
The blood bank is a true bank -— receiving, saving, distributing -— and its core business involves an element as powerful and fundamental as money (but less often at the centre of consciousness).
Blood is imbued with both physical and spiritual force in Jewish tradition. The shared letters that link the Hebrew words for man, earth, red and blood reveal the powerful continuities that bind these parts together to bring about life.
Blood is seen as the life force, or soul, of animals. Eating meat is less than ideal in the biblical worldview, and while allowed, the laws of kashrut acknowledge that animals have souls of some kind and must be respected as living things through prohibiting the consumption of their blood.
In donating blood, we are sharing something of ourselves. It’s different from giving money or even time because of the direct, physical connection that is made between taking something from our own body and giving it to another in order to heal.
As with so many deeds that are altruistic, we start out wanting to do it for the sake of others and find in the process that we gain so much ourselves.
There are the biscuits, of course. And the warm inner glow (which takes a little time to kindle as one can be left feeling a little drained).
But the most rewarding aspect is the renewed sense of, and respect for, community. People are generous, they care. Not everyone is completely caught up in their own lives. Hundreds, thousands, do this and other voluntary acts daily.
A couple of visits ago I was seated beside a woman in the waiting room. We didn’t talk, each happy to read our books or magazines, the details elude me now. But we acknowledged each other with a smile, as you do when sitting around.
Bizarrely, a few hours later I happened to pass this very same person in the aisle of a supermarket on the other side of town, each of us now with kids in tow.
The coincidence was so powerful —- eerie almost -— it shocked us both. Unless of course it wasn’t pure chance at work, but simply how it is when the heart of community pumps strongly, bringing people together, making strangers less strange.
Sidra Kranz Moshinsky is a Melbourne-based writer and teacher.
comments