Archives: meaning

If you follow me on Twitter, you can’t have helped but notice that it’s been a very busy week, with no less than five pieces of media telling my story during transplant week. (Links to follow).

Transplant week is always a special week for me, for very obvious reasons. It’s a chance to harp on about the miracle of organ donation and for me to tell my story to inspire people to have difficult conversations with their family and sign the Organ Donor Register to record their wishes.

It’s also a challenging week. It forces my life into a spotlight, not just in the media, but in my own head as well.

Talking about the difference between pre- to post-transplant me shows just how far I’ve come, but also challenges my perception of my life and what I’ve achieved. It challenges my understanding of the world I live in and it challenges the decisions I’ve made in the years since my transplant.

And here’s what it all comes down to:

I feel a pressure to “succeed” and make a difference that my donor would be proud of.

The funny thing is that I know this is silly. I know there’s no reason for me to feel this way, or for it to leave me feeling inadequate if I haven’t achieved what I feel is “success”. Yet it’s a feeling I can’t shake.

As one very good friend said to me during the week when I voiced this to her, “Your donor will just be happy they’ve allowed you to still be here, regardless of what you’re doing and how successful you are.”

The problem I face is that I don’t know that for sure. Yes, it makes sense. Yes, I can see the logic. But I’ve never met and will never be able to meet my donor, so I don’t know what they think.

That’s why I’ve been so busy this week. That’s why I remain so willing to talk so openly about my transplant journey. That’s why I’ll always take advantage of transplant week. Because it’s the one chance I get to demonstrate just how much this all means to me.

To that end, I’ll be sharing links to the various media hits I had this week here on the blog in the next few days. If you’ve heard them already, thanks for listening. If not, perhaps download them and have a listen in the car or when you’re out for a walk. The two radio interviews are the most in-depth I’ve ever done and in both of them I share some thoughts and stories I’ve never shared publicly before.

And, of course, if you haven’t already, please sign the Organ Donor Register.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

— Rudyard Kipling

Nothing sums up the way I’m feeling this morning better than this amazing poem. It’s probably my all-time favourite poem and I try every day to live my life by it.

Around 8am this morning, I anticipated being in the middle of deepest Wales, holed up in a little hotel not far from the foot of Snowdon, enjoying a celebratory breakfast with the 3 Peaks team and our nearest and dearest who were all coming out to join us.

Instead I woke at home, in my own bed, many hundreds of miles from where I wanted to be and feeling pretty rubbish about it, if I’m honest.

But, straight from my Life According To Kipling playbook, I’m off out for a celebratory breakfast with one of the team and their wife, both great friends who’ve been hugely supportive through the whole crazy rollercoaster of the last few weeks.

I am facing disaster and treating is just the same as I would have the triumph of completing the 3 Peaks. By celebrating I’m telling whatever higher power has deemed it necessary to prevent me completing it for the 2nd year in a row that I will not be bowed, I will not be cowed and I will never stop appreciating, loving and making the most of the gift I’ve been given. Wales or Wellingborough, it makes no difference to me.

If this post means anything to you, please share the sign-up link for the organ donor register for the trek – http://www.bit.ly/oli3peaks – by copying and pasting or sharing the link to this post. Help us make sure everyone who needs it gets the second chance I’ve had.