It was a lovely afternoon at his home in Cape Cod. He was with his wife. They had nowhere to be and nothing to do. They were enjoying the stillness of the New England summer. They were enjoying each other. They did not know, could not know, that death was in the room with them.
Sebastian Junger (who has appeared on the Daily Stoic podcast—listen here) had ruptured an undiagnosed aneurysm in his pancreatic artery. He was bleeding to death internally, not even aware something was wrong until it was nearly too late.
But this is not a memento mori lesson (although his amazing book In My Time of Dying is filled with an extended meditation on this idea). Sebastian Junger lived. He was saved by ten units of blood at Cape Cod hospital.
"In other words," he writes, "ten anonymous blood donors saved my life." As a result, Junger now donates blood as often as possible—roughly three to four times a year (find your local blood bank here). "Please donate blood at your nearest blood bank," he pleads, "you may well save the life of a child or a parent, and one day you may need blood yourself…There aren't many ways to be part of something greater than yourself, and donating blood is one of the easiest and finest."
The virtue of justice is not about law courts and judges and juries, as we explain in Right Thing Right Now. It's about things like this. Finding ways to be of service. Finding ways to pay forward the acts of charity and grace that we would not be here without. Finding ways to be part of something bigger than yourself. Finding ways to pull those rings from Hierocles' Circles (our video on this here) inward, to help people you have never met and will never know.
That's why this Giving Tuesday we're asking you to help us lift every family in a Rwandan village out of extreme poverty via our partners at GiveDirectly—all donations today will be doubled.
Your money will be delivered to 156 families in a village in Nyanza, where most people live on $1-2/day. Each family will receive ~$1,100 to spend and invest on what they need most.
To us, this might buy a new laptop or month of rent. For them, it means a whole new life, empowering them to build their first home, start a business, go to school, and more.
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