Today is my lovely girlfriend's birthday. You should all have wished her a happy one.
For the occasion, her parents drove up and we all went to see the Freshmen Play, together. This year they chose The God Committee, a play based on a heart transplant committee at a New England Community Hospital somewhere.
The main point of the play was that we as people do not have the means (or the right) to decide who does or does not deserve to live. We simply don't. There is no quantitative way to assign value to a person's life. And yet, we all do it. When I meet a guy who lives on the street, as compared to a successful, kind-hearted businesswoman (I'm assuming they exist) I instinctively decide who has a more valuable life.
Hospitals try to account for this by saying that whoever is the most likely to live longer (and fuller) deserves to do so.
This still doesn't make up for the fact that we can never know who WILL use the heart better, but only who is more LIKELY to use the heart better.
I am a firm believer in the idea that 5 seconds well spent by an ungrateful, unsuccessful, ugly, dirty person can be infinitely more valuable than years of the life of someone who society admires. I believe this, in large part, because I see some of all of those bad characteristics in myself, and I want to know that significance can come to my life even if I am not capable of intentionally creating it.
So, let's just say I don't envy them the responsibility. Because regardless of the fact that we're unable to make an informed, just decision, a decision still has to be made.
That, my friends, is the human condition.
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So, this is the blog of Brett. I used to write on my Myspace and I still use my Facebook all the time to tell people what's going on in my life, but I suppose true blogging isn't about what's happening in your life, it's about your reaction to it and what it inspires you to think. Not to say that this is my journal. It's where I drop my brain off at the end of the day.
