Page 114 - Book about Friendship and Future.Stories of Volunteers.

Maria Obukhova

Recruitment Specialist
Amrest LLC, St. Petersburg

Let Yourself Start

The most part of my life I have been mistaken.
I have always believed that one can change the world only
being a Batman, possessing a bunch of superhero qualities, from
fearlessness to the absence of the survival instinct. Being a hero
meant entering buildings on fire in order to save a kitten, provid-
ing artificial respiration to the victim of injury and granting mil-
lions to the charity funds.
I always thought that only hard-hearted people worked in
hospices, orphanages and animal shelters – people who due to
their profession had atrophied the ability to sympathize. And
I was also sure that these things could not be changed, that I had
no chance to change something that had been following its rules
for dozens of years. I was sure that all this had been before me,
was existing together with me and would continue after me. That
my aid was just a miserable drop in a huge ocean.
I am 27 years old, I have no kids and I am not a superhero.
I have not got a special coat, I never saved kittens from a house
on fire and I have not earned my first million yet. I have not gone
into politics, nor have I invented a medicine to fight cancer. From
time to time I smoke and use foul language. Am I a bad person?
I am just an ordinary person, trying to destroy millions of preju-
dices that are living in the head, grounding on hundreds of ste-
reotypes.
I am a regular person, a KFC staff member, who realized: it
is OK to make mistakes. I am learning not to divide people into
good and bad. I want to see only good things and always strive
to the light, even when I feel deep darkness in my soul. Earlier,
I used to think that volunteering was only about giving, but it has
been teaching me so much. I have realized that it is better to do
at least some small good deed than to do nothing at all. After all,
what is the ocean if not a great number of drops.