I love to learn. More accurately, I love to educate myself.
I don’t mean learn, like learning for an exam, revising…nope not my thing really. What I mean, is that I love to gain knowledge, explore topics and things that I am interested in.
It is something that I love, and more than that, I think it is so important. I believe in people being awake to society and the issues that surround us everyday. Especially for young people, at the end of the day it is the world we are shaping and growing up in and that we experience every day.
I think that I have been incredibly lucky, always having had very open minded people around me. My family, my teachers, friends, and many others I have crossed paths with and have taught me to look at the world and observe and wonder and ask questions.
Asking questions…something I am fairly good at. My doctors and nurses will quite possibly say that I’m too good at it. I never stop asking questions. I always want to know what the medicine is for, are there any side effects, what does that blood result mean, what is this test for. Always curious. Ever since I was first ill I always wanted to have as much information as possible.
I wanted..(want) to know as much as possible about my condition, how your body works and what happens when it goes wrong.
I think my curiosity about this stuff is what fuelled me wanting to raise awareness of organ donation. I wanted to know other people’s experiences, their opinions, what people thought about the subject…if people thought about the subject.
Turns out, people don’t think about it – generally – until they have to.
This is where the school plays a part. I mean, would people really think about trigonometry if they had to? Okay, so maybe some people would…but I’m guessing not that many.
But school is somewhere that shapes people, whether we all realise it or not. We go there most days of our lives for sixteen plus years. It is a huge part of who we are.
People say that half the stuff you learn in school is irrelevant, but looking back, I guess all of it had some use or another. Definitely some of it was a lot more useful than other parts. And definitely there would have been things I’d have loved to learn in school.
Politics. Money planning. Taxes (how on earth does that stuff work? does anyone really know?). Generally, how to adult. Not quite sure about that whole situation. Mental health. Organ donation.
Organ donation. Why schools do not teach this is honestly beyond me.
The dream, the ultimate dream, would be for every school to teach young people about organ donation. Show them stories of how it works, how it saves lives, how important it is.
The education of young people is, I think, how we will make changes in the world…hopefully for the better. And it is how we normalise issues, one generation at a time.
I hope I can do my part to normalise the topic of organ donation. I’m still learning how to do that in the best way.
I hope we can all do our part.
Lucia X
(First posted 4th January 2019)