Organ donor

I've had an organ donor card since 2001. It requests that after my death any part of my body can be used for the treatment of others.

It seems to me like a harmless and altruistic thing to do. What could be more generous than bequeathing parts of my body to others who urgently need them?

And yet there's still a large number of people who oppose organ donation. Transplant waiting lists are growing and yet 2½ million people are refusing to help. The number of organ donations is actually falling.

What on earth is stopping people from becoming organ donors? Once you're dead you have no further use for your bodily organs so why shouldn't they be passed on to people who desperately need them? The dead person isn't going to object, so what's the problem?

So what if granny was totally opposed to organ donations? Surely the urgent need of a living patient for a vital organ trumps the well-meaning observance of granny's wishes?

Stuck in the mud

A friend said the other day that I was a bit of a stick in the mud, which rather bothered me until I realised there's nothing wrong with being a stick in the mud in itself. It all depends what you're a stick in the mud about.

I'm happy to be a stick in the mud if it means believing in things like politeness, friendliness, altruism*, democracy, the welfare state, and women's liberation. If you're a stick in the mud about banning immigration or keeping women in their place, that's a different matter.

We could do with a lot more of the high-minded stick-in-the-mud types, given how easily people now abandon any worthwhile principles in favour of bending the rules, breaking the law, lying their heads off and denigrating other people.

If the opposite of being stuck in the mud is being totally suggestible and going along with anything that's trendy and superficially appealing, then I'm very content to be a stick in the mud and true to my beliefs.

It's intriguing that now the phrase implies a personal failing - someone who deliberately resists change. That's not how it was used in the past. It implied someone who was unable to progress through no fault of their own - someone whose feet were stuck in soft clay.

*Now there's a word you don't hear often today - altruism. Meaning a disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.

Heroes

I wish people wouldn't use the word hero so casually, not just for those who've done something genuinely heroic and life-threatening but for anyone who's done something a little bit daring.

Firefighters rescuing someone from a burning building, or a person fighting back against an armed mugger, yes, that's genuinely heroic, but someone who brings down a cat stuck up a tree - no, that's not heroic, that's just helpful.

Patrick Hutchinson, a black man who carried another man to safety at a far-right protest rally in London on Saturday, has been described by the media as a hero. Well no, not really, because he was shielded by his friends as he did his "heroic" act.

Likewise all those health workers who've been hailed as "heroic" for months. Most of them dislike the word and say they're just doing their job, treating illness and saving lives just as they did before the virus outbreak.

Likewise people delivering food to the housebound are described as heroes, when all they're doing is looking after the vulnerable and making sure people don't starve. That's not heroism, simply altruism and kindness.

The word heroism is always applied to something physical, but to my mind it can also mean something mental or emotional.

Someone who overcomes crippling fear and self-doubt to make a big change in their life they've always shied away from - that's heroic. Or someone who overcomes the memory of a horrific sexual assault to start dating again. Or those who're always true to themselves despite others trying to push them along a different path.

Like Professor Gail Dines, the American anti-porn campaigner, who has been heavily criticised by other academics but carries on regardless.

And then of course there's refusing a second slice of chocolate cake or a second helping of ice cream - how heroic is that?

In two minds

I always feel ambivalent about other people’s miseries. On the one hand I want to help them and make them feel better. On the other, I don’t want their misery to deflate my own happiness.

Should I respond altruistically or selfishly? Should I think of their well-being or my own? Should I leave them to sort out their own negative feelings or ride to the rescue?

I think this ambivalence is quite common. Although there’s a huge market for books about people’s miserable past, about the abuse and neglect and poverty and self-hatred, in our daily life we may turn away from a stranger’s rambling hard luck story with a dismissive shrug. It may be too much to handle if we’re already wrestling with a dozen problems of our own.

Some people’s misery is so personal, so rooted in their own psyche and their way of seeing things, that it can be hard to relieve it however much we try. Any amount of sympathetic listening, intelligent advice or tough talking may cheer them up for half an hour but then the misery returns.

Also, misery can be very multi-layered. It can take time to dig out the exact cause. What someone tells us to begin with may be only the most trivial bits, the bits that are easiest to talk about. It may take a lot of patient coaxing to get to the heart of what’s clawing at them.

If it’s someone we love, that patience is easily come-by. But if it’s a mere acquaintance, we’re nervous about what we might be getting into and we’re more cautious with our concern.

And of course people often hide their misery. It’s embarrassing to confess that they don’t enjoy life. They see it as a personal failure, a temperamental flaw. They’d rather keep this awful affliction to themselves. We may guess at their private sorrow, but there’s no way they’ll talk about it.

But if it’s possible to ease someone’s misery and make them a little happier, it’s one of the most satisfying feelings in the world. What more can you do for another human being?

Vital organs

For many years I've carried in my bag a card that allows any part of my body to be donated to others if I die. This seems a much better idea than simply burying or burning them.

If I have perfectly healthy organs that can benefit others, and there are people out there desperate to have them, why not pass them on? Why not recycle them and keep someone else alive and well?

I really don't understand those individuals who are too squeamish or possessive or fastidious not to permit such therapeutic use of what they leave behind. It's just flesh and tissue in the end.

There's an irrational fear that if someone allows the use of their organs after death, their death will somehow be surreptiously hastened to harvest parts that are urgently needed.

I don't know of any cases where this has happened, though I know of instances where people already dead have had bits secretly removed and stored without the knowledge or permission of the relatives.

Even if I were to be the victim of such unauthorised removal, I still wouldn't object if the parts were being put to a good use such as research or training. They'd be no more use to me, after all.

And isn't the possibility of helping someone less fortunate (or even half a dozen) more important than the tiny risk of that offer being abused by someone unscrupulous? It's like refusing to give to charity because someone somewhere might waste the money on boardroom chandeliers.

One of the best-known cases of posthumous organ donation is that of Nicholas Green, a seven year old Californian boy who was killed by robbers in Italy. His organs and corneas were donated to seven different Italians waiting for transplants. Organ donations in Italy have tripled since his murder and thousands of people who would have died are still alive and healthy.

How could anyone say no to such simple, undemanding altruism?

Butt in or butt out?

After several horrific fatal stabbings in London, people are asking themselves what they would do if they saw something dreadful happening as they walked down the street.

What would I do? If I saw a man attacking a woman or threatening someone with a knife, if I saw a woman wrecking her ex's car or hitting her child, would I intervene or would I hurry past telling myself it was dangerous to interfere?

I've often seen mildly disturbing scenes like a man and woman screaming at each other or a woman swearing at her little boy, but I've never seen anything so violent or sickening that I've thought seriously of trying to stop it and protect the victim.

It's hard to predict what I would do if I suddenly found myself in that situation. I like to think I would do the altruistic thing and intervene but I might simply be too scared to act. Especially if the attacker looked really vicious or was brandishing a weapon.

I do remember though an occasion many years ago when Jenny and I were in a London supermarket and saw the manager knock to the ground a frail elderly man who was walking out with a stolen packet of cheese.

We were so disgusted we complained heatedly to the cashier and abandoned the basket of groceries we had been about to buy. Afterwards we both felt very public-spirited and glad we had made our anger known.

But when I hear about people who've tried to stop some act of violence, and ended up seriously injured or even dead, it does make me think twice about being a Good Samaritan. When it came to it, would I just cut and run?