So you may have heard of the ice bucket challenge. Jennifer Fletcher challenged me yesterday and I looked it up. From what I could gather, a baseball player was diagnosed with ALS and his friend took the ice bucket challenge (which has existed for a long time for other causes) to raise awareness about his condition. His video spread, and now, if you have been on the Internet at all in the past few weeks, you have seen videos of people dumping ice water on their heads. There are two parties that are driving me crazy with this challenge. The first are those who believe that they are doing something absolutely amazing by dousing themselves, because this obviously displays strong moral character. There is nothing brave or charitable about following a trend, sorry. Dousing yourself does not make you a saint. The other party thats driving me crazy, though, are the cynics who get angry at the videos, saying that you should just donate money to ALS research without foolishly making a video. While I agree that donating is good and obviously beneficial, the increase in donations would not have occurred without the popularity of these videos. These short clips of ice baths have gotten people talking. And when people talk, they start to think, they start to empathize, they start taking actions to donate or find other ways to support a charitable cause. The ALS Association has had an exponential increase in donations, and its all because of this internet sensation. So do I think its silly to dump ice water on my head? Well, yeah. But I know I have had things about which I am passionate and wished that I had a way to get people talking and, conversely, acting. I think it is great that the ALSA is being recognized and that others are finally learning about and talking about ALS and the people whom it affects. So even though I hate cold, I donated and took the challenge, paying it forward to spread the word about a disease and the people who are passionate about combating it. And instead of challenging others to dump ice on their heads, I challenge everyone reading this to figure out a cause for which you are passionate and to get off your butt and do something for that cause that will start people talking. The world is a lovely place, and the first step of effecting change is to get the conversations going.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 18:56:07 +0000
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