ALS, ice buckets and me.

So these ice bucket challenges started popping up on my Facebook newsfeed and I remained neutral.  I heard some talk on the radio that there was a surfeit of ice and insufficient info on ALS which I thought was fair comment, although the radio hosts defended the challenge passionately.

Then I got nominated....

As you can see I'm wet from the beginning as my dear son's finger accidentally slipped onto the pause button just before the first dunking, but my nephew (the dunker) and I scrambled on the grass for still semi-formed ice cubes and this time we caught it.

Strangely enough, this small little piece of awareness raising, and I made sure to read up on the condition, post some facts and watch the origin of the challenge....caused some controversy, with a friend of mine lambasting me for being narcissistic (in my gym clothes dragged out of the laundry basket...ahem) and somehow commercial! 

I was disappointed and flabbergasted by this response, so I had to question myself.  But really it's clear to me why I did it.  I'm a teacher and this provided an excellent learning opportunity, for myself (I'd never heard of the condition before) for my children and it will certainly come into the classroom come September.  I believe awareness raising is always good.  It opens dialogues, it leads to greater recognition and it can channel money into a productive direction.

There's the other argument that there are lots of other worthy causes to support...but to me that's a non argument.  Of course there are!! Millions! Who's to say which one's more worthy? Certainly not me.  The point is there's only so much any one person can do at any one time.  So you follow your heart and support what speaks to you, by talking, doing and giving.  Supporting this cause doesn't negate any other cause...and even the dialogue that's jumping up about Americans wasting water while a number of developing countries are in drought is a healthy debate which may not have sprung up had the ice bucketers not gone viral.

So in conclusion I'm glad I accepted the challenge, and I will continue to accept challenges. In the meantime, I will build my motivation to put my heart and soul into a cause close to my heart, a cause in which I can make a palpable difference. 

As for anyone still insisting on taking a moral high ground on something which is helping thousands of people, I will leave you with this.