Giving blood makes you extraordinary, not vain

I AM extraordinary. The email arrives this morning and tells me so.

At first I think the sender is being too casual with her compliments.

I am, after all, just your average beast.

It’s from the Red Cross blood mob. The subject header is Thank you Margaret, you are extraordinary.

Perhaps their marketing people have eaten too many sweet biscuits at morning tea, surely the cause of such gran- diose statements. Next, they’ll be calling me a hero because I’ve got veins and I’m not afraid to use them.

But I pop my cynicism aside and consider it for a moment. Could she be right, this inbox filler, in being so flowery in the subject header?

I try thinking what extraordinary might mean. I’m guessing it’s something like not your average garden variety.

And you know when I look through the prism of blood donations, it’s true, I am not your garden variety. Most people don’t give blood. I do.

So right now, I’m happy to take the compliment, to look right down that long prism of life, right down to the tiny subset of blood.

And then to consider that in the tiny subset of blood — along with diseases, types, vampires, lipstick colours, blood noses, blood blisters and blood oranges — there is another minuscule subset called blood donations.

There I am. You might be there or you might not. I’m not judging you.

But if you are there, you too are extraordinary, not your average garden variety. And the point of all this? Well, maybe if someone gives you a compliment, you should accept it. Smile nicely.

Because life is so huge and there are so many ways to measure things, you may just warrant the praise in your tiny subset.

Own your extraordinary.