March is Red Cross Month, which means we recognize our noble volunteers, EMS and fire rescue personnel, and those who selflessly participate in humanitarian aid worldwide.
Originating in historically-neutral Switzerland, the Red Cross serves as the most concentrated form of human selflessness and love: rendering aid to complete strangers in times of severe crisis.
There’s no instinct that is more primal than survival. It’s amazing what the human body can do under the most strenuous circumstances and how it can survive and adapt after serious stress or damage. Not only is the human body a methodically-created machine, but the human psyche is perhaps one of the most powerful forces on earth. Not just the body’s need to survive, but the mind’s will to survive makes it all the more ethereal.
This is why an organization dedicated to such selflessness, such as the Red Cross, deserves all the recognition and honor it and its employees, volunteers, and associates receive. To uphold such a fundamental instinct for people who are strangers, often in different parts of the country or the world, with competing worldviews and cultures, and maybe even animosity on some superficial level is nothing short of admirable and laudable.
But that’s just the more profound end of the equation. The Red Cross also assists in the acts of kindness that appear smaller at face value, but can have the same profound impact as any other form of assistance. Providing exhausted firefighters with a hot cup of coffee after fighting a blaze, training and certifying people in CPR, swimming, and even babysitting, and even providing blood services are just a few of the selfless acts the Red Cross can perform. They’re acts that are innocuous enough to blend in with the day-to-day acts of kindness, servitude, or selflessness, but they’re acts that can truly mean the world to someone, either immediately, or for years to come.
The Messenger recognizes and thanks all Red Cross personnel, volunteers, and associates, as well as our first responders in law enforcement, fire, and rescue services. The month of March might specifically seek to honor those in the Red Cross, but we wholeheartedly believe they are deserving of recognition year-round.
