It's my kidneyversary!
Today marks six years since I gave my dad a kidney and one year since I wrote about it for this site.
Last year, I wrote an essay about the decision I made in 2018 to become a kidney donor and the atheist convictions/humanist ethics underpinning that decision.
See, I don’t believe there’s any higher power watching over us. That means there’s no higher power judging us. But it also means there’s no higher power ensuring this world has mercy or justice or kindness. So I think, if we’re going to have those things, they’ll have to come from us.
“Embody, for a moment, the subjective experience of atheism,” I write. “Imagine standing alone before a vast and careless universe. In that reality, truly, what is there to do but find others and love them fiercely?”
The essay also features a darkly humorous tale of the existential crisis I had on a cruise ship in Skagway, Alaska. In case you needed further inducement.
I’m very proud of this piece. And it got a lot of a attention when I published it last year. I was particularly touched by the Christian friends and relatives who reached out to say they found my words both thought-provoking and respectful and that it helped them understand me better.
I hope to write more about the topics of atheism and humanism in the future, but I’ll wait until I have something fresh to say.
For now, please enjoy this throwback essay. If you read it last year and it spoke to you, share it with a friend. And maybe look into kidney donation yourself. It’s easier than you think and more rewarding than you could imagine. Most of us can live with one kidney just fine. But your spare could save a life.
Thank you very much Jeff Victor. I knew there was another reason I liked you. We are akin. Being a fellow atheist, I appreciated your words and your compassion and giving of yourself. At the moment I can't be that articulate or eloquent to describe how moved I am. I am also the only person in the crowd with my head up during prayers. I'll read your essay now - thank you for sharing, it's greatly appreciated. I'll leave you with a quote from another atheist, who, like you, and me has a fierce reverence for life - Ta-Nehisi Coates from his book: "Between the World and Me". "I believed, and still do, that our bodies are our selves, that my soul is the voltage conducted through neurons and nerves, and that my spirit is my flesh." Thank you, amber