Reason

Do we die before we find a reason,
When there's reasons more than counting to be found...?


When so many lives seem bored, purposeless and adrift of meaning, and yet so many needs in the world go unmet for want of a helping hand, maybe we just need to be reminded that there are reasons - good ones - for providing some of that help ourselves.

A true story:
One day in the century before last, a farmer was walking through the English marshland when he heard a cry for help. Investigating, he found that a young boy had fallen into a marsh and was sinking, so he grabbed a branch and pulled him to safety.

It turns out that this boy was the son of a nobleman. The next day, the noble's carriage arrived at the farm, as he came to personally thank the farmer and reward him for saving his son's life.
The farmer refused all the nobleman's offers, however, insisting that no reward was necessary. Nothing the nobleman said could make the farmer change his mind, until another young boy entered the house. Learning that this was the farmer's own son, the noble made a different suggestion. He offered to provide the farmer's son with the same education and training that his own would receive, and for the sake of his son the farmer accepted.

The nobleman was Lord Randalph Churchill. His son was Winston Churchill, who led Britain's dogged defence against Nazism in World War II. The farmer's son was Alexander Fleming, who as a result of the education he received went on to discover penicillin.

This little exchange changed the world. Penicillin has saved millions upon millions of lives, including - almost certainly - your own or those of your family and friends. In societies that practice Western medicine, there can be very few people who have not been affected in some way by that conversation in a small, worker's cottage.

The really interesting thing, though, is not that the farmer saved Winston Churchill's life - most of us can find it within ourselves to save a drowning child. No, what makes the farmer's actions special is that he was prepared to do this bit of good just for the sake of it. Had he taken the reward first offered by Lord Churchill - and part of him would surely have been tempted to - young Alexander would never have had the education he did, and the lives and accomplishments of millions of people would have been lost to the world.

So what do we take away from this?Perhaps it's that, no matter how mundane or insignificant our circumstances may be, doing a bit of good with our lives can sometimes be really, really important.

Like really important.

Gandhi once said that the difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems. Even if the good you do never saves a million lives - or even one - it can't help but improve the world somehow.

And that's surely reason enough.