If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
While listening to the song “If everyone cared” by Nickelback, sitting in the soft red chair of the air-conditioned Luke Auditorium, the realization hits me. There are people on the same Earth as me, who are losing everything. Everything they’ve ever had is slowly leaving them, until they feel like they are alone in the world.
“If everyone cared, and nobody cried, if everyone loved, and nobody lied, if everyone shared and swallowed their pride, then we’d see the day when nobody died.” The words danced around me as if trying to get me to understand the real meaning behind the actual lyrics. The movie we were watching was created by an entrepreneur and originally focused on entrepreneurship. Entrepreneur in the dictionary means “a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so.” From this meaning, it seems as if entrepreneurship is not only about taking financial risks, but taking financial risks to better the lives of those around you, and those so very far away who need a lot of help.
This song along with the support of the pictures of the people around the world helping others inspired me to go out to try and make a difference in someone’s life. In seventh grade, I’d heard about this organization, HUGS. HUGS stands for Help, Understanding, and Group Support. HUGS supports families with children suffering from illnesses. This sparked my interest because it doesn’t just help the child with the illness, but their parents and siblings also. The volunteering at HUGS worked mostly with respites. The children are dropped off at the HUGS house by their parents for the respites, and each child gets a volunteer to look after them. This past week I went to HUGS and took care of a girl named Annika who suffers from some kind of cancer and she and her brother Arman come to respites quite often.
I followed around Annika who is pushing a stroller and I gazed around at all the children, and was amazed at how they can still be children after what they’ve been through. There were children running around laughing and playing baseball with their friends, children swinging on the swings, and children sliding down the slide. These children are happy just to be living and playing with others. Just looking at the glowing faces of the HUGS children will surely bring a smile to yours. Starting HUGS showed me how to love, just being alive, and to live every moment like it's your last. The children there are always smiling and having fun. The HUGS children always amaze me at how much they understand about their illness and others around them. They will grow up to be non-judgmental people because of the environment that they were brought up in. The children have been through so much, yet they still have time to smile and throw in a little laugh here and there.
They are stronger now, than I ever will be, and that I shall always remember about my time at HUGS. The lyrics that guided me to this service are as follows:
If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
Then we'd see the day when nobody died.
–“If Everyone Cared” Nickelback
