If I give away a kidney, will I become a better person? | Zoe Williams

IIt’s great to donate blood if you are Oh negative. I do absolutely nothing to produce this stuff, I don’t even drink water that often, and yet I have constant, positive interactions with the donation people. Every phone call starts with a five-minute introduction about how great I am. Each email contains a heartwarming story about someone who needed O-negative, then got it, and now he’s alive, thanks to me. Sometimes they randomly send me a badge or a plastic bracelet that says “first responder” on it, which makes me sound like a hero who ran, but didn’t walk, towards an emergency, unlike what I am: a person who goes once in a while four months into the city for 20 minutes of no-big-deal and gets a pint of squash and an orange club at the end. I love it. Last year they asked me to go in on Boxing Day, and I said no, don’t be silly, it’s Boxing Day, and I still came away feeling like a king.

Then I got an email this morning with a slightly different question: blood is great and all, but have you ever heard of living organ donation? For example, would you like to give away a kidney? It took a while, somewhere in the neighborhood of: “Thank you for your direct debit of five euros per month, would you like to donate your house to us?” But I paid the necessary attention to it. I know three people with only one kidney: one because she was born with a kidney problem; one gave his to his sister; First of all, I don’t know what happened to her – it turns out this is something you have to wait for before you hear.

None of them are less healthy than me, but I bet they all live healthier lifestyles. It may be that not having one kidney makes you want to take better care of the other one, and while you’re there, the rest of your organs. Or there could be an adaptive effect, similar to the way poor eyesight can actually make your hearing good. Or – this might be a bit of a gamble – to think that after the organ donation I would function as well as my colleagues with one kidney, except for my morals, sheesh: they would be off the charts.

You should never think about extravagant pro-social behavior, especially on a Monday morning. When you engage in one act of life-changing generosity that you don’t intend to do, your thoughts drift inexorably to all the other things—smaller, easier, less drastic things—that you’re not doing either. I haven’t signed up for anything since Covid, and that was only because I was bored. I only participate in a third of the protests that I agree with, and there are probably more that I would agree with if I participated. I once interviewed a striking nurse who casually said that people in the North West of England know never to show up to a picket line empty-handed; Every time I saw a picket line after that, I decided to grab a few sandwiches, and I’ve never done that. I have never done what they call an “arrestable action” at a demonstration, despite having been convinced for centuries that the only thing that will change the world’s course on the climate crisis is mass civil disobedience. I don’t give away enough. I see a graph about child poverty, get angry for a while, and then put it in the back of my mind. It’s terrifying to think how much time, energy, and money I could share, for the concrete or future benefit of others, before I got to the actual body parts. Terrifying, but perhaps also useful and stimulating; something to work with, a break from the usual crushing feeling of powerlessness.

Anyway, cheers, donation services, another great interaction: you can not I have a kidney, but I’m going to live a better life, and maybe later I’ll give you some platelets.