Dance to Make the World a Better Place

This weekend I had the great privilege and honor to be a part of the 3rd annual Cincinnati Dance Marathon. For those of you who do not know what the dance marathon is, I wanted to take some time to explain about CDM and the courage that I pull from it every year.

Last year was my first time being involved with the CDM, and to be honest I did it because I have to do 30hrs of community service for my scholarship here at school. However I must say after the first 2 hours there I realized that we as students were there for a bigger reason, and a greater purpose. The Cincinnati Dance Marathon is exactly what the title states; a dance marathon in Cincinnati, but truthfully it is much more than that. CDM is a one day event that happens every year where hundreds of college students from the University of Cincinnati come together and literally dance for 24hrs straight to raise money for Cincinnati's Children’s Hospital. This year the students involved (a little over 600) raised over $23,000. This might not seem like a lot to some people, but to students who live off of Roman Noodles and Pizza, I was really proud to say that I was a part of it. 

The thing that touched me the most were actually the children from the hospital that came to the dance marathon to talk about their health issues.  Some of these kids are undiagnosed, some with some of the world's rarest diseases, and some who are just really sick. Above all of this, these kids took time out of their crazy and volatile lives to come and thank us for spending our time and money to help them. This whole situation really makes me think about the finer things in life that I feel most Americans take for granite every single day, such as life itself. I find that spending an hour with someone who is holding on to life by the tips of their fingers helps keep life in perspective for us that have more than we truly know. 

I am not saying that everyone should feel the need to go out and spend time with sick children in a hospital, however that is something that this has made me want to do more often to give back, but I do think that situations like this should help us balance things in life that we feel to be rights, and not privileges. There is nothing more humbling and gratifying than spending some time with someone, and through that bring happiness to both you and that person. That is the joy that should be passed around to our peers not one of the more possessions I have the happier I will become.

I want to apologize to anyone who first feels that my statements have been all over the place through this post, but also to someone who finds what I say to be demeaning to someone with lots of possessions. I just want to be clear in stating that I am not saying that possessions are bad, but rather a healthy balance of possessions and giving back to those in a lesser situation might be exactly what some people need.