Signing up for organ donation

I underwent the law test, vision screening and necessary paperwork for a driving license. Before signing on the digital dotted line, I was cursorily asked a question about whether I would like to be included in their database as an organ donor. (The exact question was worded differently and escapes me now but it meant approximately the same.) I think they were asking me to enroll as an organ donor and not just whether I was already registered and would like to be addded to their list.

Organ donation is obviously a good thing, a moral thing to do. But why do so few people do it? Why didn't I sign up immediately then and there?

For me, it would be an important decision to be discussed with my family members.  I know it is an emotive issue for them and they would probably not be very comfortable with the whole concept. Maybe it should not concern them at all. After all it is my body, plus most of the donations happen after one's death. The point is, I needed time to think about it. As such, making a split second decision while facing a decidely cold and humorless MVA agent who seemed eager to get things over with,  wasn't something I was looking forward to, especially since I didn't know that that question would pop up during the driving license process.

On the face of it, it seems like a good idea to ask people to sign up for organ donation when they come to the government for a license. The ubiquity of licenses ensures greater coverage.

But is it really effective?

Many selves

Maybe we are not one self. We are infinite selves separated by seconds, emotions, desires and actions. The self typing this different from the self who was enjoying a TV show just now or who was reading a book earlier. All of these selves are different from the one cooking or working.

We aspire to be a different kind of self. I have an image of myself created in my mind - what I want to be what I want to achieve.

Realizing these different selves is important to stop the blaming and guilt of lost opportnunities,to understand what goes on in my unmotivated state, why I lose opportunities when I do.

What if I convince my other selves to co-operate with each other to work towards becoming the one desired self.

What if I tell myself that the reason I don't feel like getting up early and going for a run is because the self who went to sleep last night planning and assuring himself that I'd do these things, is different from the self who is feeling comfortable in the warm bed. I must understand that because they are different they will need different kinds and degrees of motivation, and more energy in total will be spent to persuade, since the morning self will not agree with the night self.

I can be mindful of the selves and address them one by one till they agree to help me reach the desired self.

You have to carry on with life, especially amidst the drama

Everyday drama will always be there. You can't stop it. And you shouldn't. Without it, life probably would lose some of its colour.

But you should recognize it for what it is. All the bunched up feelings, expectations, inevitable disappointments, a question here, an exclamation there, a snub, silence...all of these are a sideshow. The real story for you is you and what you are doing. Are you making a difference. Is what you are doing what you wanted to do or leading to what you want to do? Question yourself, but not too much. Better to have a bias towards action.

Take the drama in your stride.

Why dealing with procrastination is really important

Whenever I talk about procrastination with others, the topic and the effect it has on people is acknowledged. But the tone of the discussion quickly takes on a lighter mood. Procrastination is viewed more as a nuisance - something that is to be expected and that will take care of itself eventually, something you will grow out of - rather than something that has life-course altering profound effects. I have felt differently about this in the past two years. I take this problem (which I suffer from a lot too) quite seriously and wish there were more serious discussions and better strategies to bring it under control.

This blog article by Dr. Timothy Pychyl  finally validates my thoughts and is presented way better than I could have articulated it. Some excerpts:

In the course of his discussion of coping with death and counseling individuals who are grieving, Dr. Eliason noted two kinds of regrets that people express in their grief over the loss of a loved one: regrets of commission and omission.

And about the regrets of ommission, the author says:

As I expected given the guilt associated with procrastination, regret over the things these grieving people really intended to do but didn't was most problematic. The regrets of omission related to our procrastination were most troubling in the grieving process.

While it may be possible to forgive oneself for an act of commission, as we all make mistakes, realizing too late in life that you simply failed to take action when you could have, is unbearable in many instances.

This is my favorite thought in the entire article: 

 Procrastination isn't simply a matter of "all-nighters" on school assignments, work projects or our taxes. Procrastination is, quite often, a failure to grasp our own agency in life. It's a life of inauthentic engagement, or lack of engagement, which can bring with it these deep regrets of omission.

I also liked that he wrote about..

....the importance of dealing with procrastination as a symptom of an existential malaise; a malaise that can only be addressed by our deep commitment to authoring the stories of our lives.

I wager that if the total cost of procrastination to human relationships and economies is calculated globally, it would exceed that of any other medical condition whether communicable or non-communicable.

Dr. Pychyl heads a procrastination research group at Carleton University, Canada and the research can be found at procratination.ca

Some respite from male-bashing

It's the end of men. Again.

Heather Gilligan offers a perspective very different from Hanna Rosin's views. The gender wars could be mostly media manufactured and escapist in nature - because we find it nearly impossible to tackle the root cause of the job losses affecting men more than women - class inequalites.

This point really resonated with me -

We’ve taken the inevitable ups and downs of unmediated capitalism and turned them into a problem that men have with women, and women have with men. We’re distracting ourselves from asking hard questions about our economic structure—examining why and how our system regularly hurtles members of the middle and working class toward financial disaster. Instead of wondering why an economy that used to support a family on the salary of one worker now requires the work of two, or where well-paying blue-collar jobs went, we snipe at each other in silly, unproductive sex wars.

Changes in tradition

So lately, a lot of the older concepts are being challenged. A roundup of stuff I came across:

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Being single is no worse than, and may in fact be better than being married.

It is better to marry in your thirties than in your twenties (directed towards women.)

Marriage should be a renewable contract with periodic reviews rather than a death-do-us-apart matter. Instead of committing for a lifetime, marriage should be treated as a time-bound license.

Having children is associated with couples being less happy as compared to childless couples.

You should have the choice of which pronoun you prefer to be addressed by - whether you are a male/female or prefer not to be identified by these 'mere social constructs'.

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A lot of these deserve thought and consideration. New ideas can take root or lead to better ideas only when the established thinking is challenged. I would practice a lot of caution though, before taking any advice on family life and relationships from modern western civilization.