There are a few things you need to put on your schedule no matter how busy, how overscheduled, or how hassled you are. 

 I’ve been going to the Red Cross Breakfast of Champions for the last few years and now I wonder how I could NOT go.  It’s a great morning and one full of emotions, (as evidenced by the packages of Red Cross tissues at each place).  The breakfast on Friday morning gave me some time to think about why we need to schedule an hour or two on a regular basis and let the “better angels of our nature” take over.   It’s not the Breakfast that I think we should put on our schedules…although if you get a chance it’s a great event.  What we need to put on our schedules is some time to give back.  Whether it’s to neighbors, our community, or the wider world. 

 Several years ago the Mile High Chapter of the Red Cross was looking for ways to honor the people and organizations that really brought the ideals of Red Cross and it’s founder Clara Barton into the communities where they live and work.  In 2002 they held the first Breakfast of Champions as a way to celebrate people giving back, in large ways and in small ways.  This year the Red Cross honored among others; a school cafeteria worker who saved a student’s life because she took the time for some Red Cross training, a boy scout who used his head and saved his sister from choking to death after he took the time to learn the Heimlich maneuver, a firefighter on vacation in Mexico who saved 3 people from drowning…in separate incidents on the same day !, using a lifetime of training.  And to a person these everyday angels say that they didn’t have time to think, they just did what needed to be done, and they knew what needed to be done thanks to the Red Cross.

Those small moments are the heart of the Red Cross,  an organization that not only provides lifesaving training, but responds to literally hundreds of disasters large and small in Colorado. Small moments in the big picture but huge moments in the lives of the people involved.  Everything from a hot meal and a blanket when your home is on fire, to support for the families of military folks on deployment, to training hundreds of people in basic lifesaving techniques.   All of that because individual people take the time…to learn, to volunteer, to train.

 That’s what this 2 hours on my schedule does for me.  It reminds me that I have to take the time…no matter how busy I am…to give something back.  Once a year I get to see the effect of taking the time, on the people involved and on the 800 or so people reaching for the tissues. 

Visit the Mile High Chapter of the Red Cross…take the time.  http://www.denver-redcross.org