At the Canadian Blood Services luncheon yesterday I found out that only 5% of eligible Canadians give blood. Only 5%! Though we all know this is important, and everyone knows someone who has needed blood at some point in their life, very few of us give.

I’ve noticed that whenever given the opportunity to help someone, whether it’s to give blood or pull over to help someone stranded on the side of the road, that my immediate instinct might be to help, but in the second instant I hesitate. I hold back.

I might call it wisdom, or thinking before acting, but often it’s this secondary “voice of reason” that makes me regret having missed an opportunity later down the road. And it seems the longer we give this voice to speak, the harder it is to go back and do that good thing we know we should be doing.

Can you relate?

What if we decided that for 24 hours, or heck, even one hour in the day, we decided we wouldn’t second guess ourselves, wouldn’t let the fear get its grip? What if we would shift our balance to our toes, trusting our instinct to volunteer first, to reach out a helping hand without worrying about the consequences?

What’s the worst that could happen?