Well it’s here again. Diabetes Awareness month. Why bother, right? TV shows will still get it wrong, organizations will still fight to own the spotlight, friends and relatives will still get it wrong, pharma companies are still the big bad guys, and our kids will still battle this disease for another year…….what difference does it really make?
If you feel, in any shape or form—even one iota, that this statement is a true statement; than you need to do more. It’s so easy to stand back from the outside and see all that is wrong with whatever YOU THINK is wrong. But hear me loudly and hear me clearly; if you think for one second that you have had enough and complaining is the best you can do than you have NO CHANCE of changing anything.
Nothing can be changed by anyone standing on the sidelines moaning about what is wrong, and who is wrong, and how it will never change. NOTHING!!!!
I’m so tired of reading gripes and complaints and the very same people do not lift a finger to make a difference. No money and no time is NOT AN EXCUSE! You do not have to give 1 penny but you surely could collect donations somewhere; and as for time—the next time you feel that way during an entire year that you do not have 10 minutes to even hang a poster of awareness……..well shame on you!
Everybody has ‘life’ thrown at the them and for the beginning of Diabetes Awareness Month, make a decision to get off the sidelines and just “Don’t do Nothing”. I’m a tad angry today as you can see……why? Because there is a huge group of people who are battling incredible winds and cold today for the JDRF ride. They have lives. They have life throwing them curveballs. They are single parents trying to make a go of it. They have type 1, and what could have been a beautiful ride has become an all out war against the weather. They could have just thrown up their hands and said, “Not Me”.
But they didn’t.
They forged on to get as much done as their weary bodies could take. They are doing it for their own and for those of us not riding. Whether you believe in JDRF or not; their advocacy on the Hill, and their funding will help your child. If you believe in the ADA or not; their constant fighting for rights in schools and elsewhere will still help your child. Whether you believe in the cure focus research of the DRI or elsewhere, when the time comes you will be glad that work continued. Whether you believe in helping people abroad or not, The Diabetes Hands Foundation will still help families abroad sleep tonight because they stepped in, and the list is much, much longer…………and yet, I’m told by someone who is doing nothing this month because “why should we when Pharma companies control everything?”
You are not doing it for PHARMA.
Nothing makes me more furious than listening to ANYone who does nothing to make this world right/better and goes and complains about the NOTHING they are doing and just why THEY ARE doing nothing.
I ask “How is that nothing going by the way? Feeling good how you are helping your child doing just that………………………Nothing?!?!?!?!”
If you want to be that way….go ahead….but shut your mouth because if you’re not in to help it….you are distracting those who care enough to fix things that need fixing, find a cure, educate the schools, climb the hill in Washington DC, lecture to a group of people, research, build better management tools, help children across the globe who cannot afford insulin, donate money, ride, walk, raise money, join boards/committees, advocate everywhere, support others, and quite honestly many of us are tired hearing that voice of ‘nothingness’.
Either get up and get involved, or be still. Because many of the rest of us have a lot of work that needs to get done and that voice of ‘nothingness’ is getting, quite honestly, very tiring.
It’s November. Diabetes Awareness Month. Get up and do something or it will be my constant prayer that in December you get a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past. It changed that guy, you’re next!
I am a diabetes dad.
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One reply on “Diabetes Awareness Month…..Yada Yada Yada….Big Yawn…..Right?”
This article moved me and made me cry. This is a fantastic article!!! What I also know to be really true is “Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.” As well as…”Don’t put off until tomorrow, the things you CAN do today”
Thank you for writing this stellar and very true article Tom, aka…ONE AWESOME DIABETES DAD! Look forward to celebrating the cure with you one day!