poland broke a world record.

 i somewhat neglected this site over the last few days, even though i truly wanted to work on it. i wanted to work on it right now, but i had an exceptionally good reason for procrastinating it.

poland just broke the record for the most money raised during a live stream fundraiser, gathering 251 758 233 pln (69,537,354.08 usd, with the previous record being 19,485,634.71 usd) for the cancer fighters foundation which happened within the span of the last 9 days. the goal in the beginning was to raise 500 000 pln (138,103.44 usd).

i don't think anyone actually planned this to go this far and i myself struggle to comprehend what happened and what led to this, i'm simply amazed. i've spent these last few days watching the stream day and night, watching the most unbelievable scenarios come true before my eyes. most of them won't make much sense to you as they're confined to the specificity of our pop-culture, but all you need to know is that this event managed to unite all of us, truly. tabloids will likely go out of business now.

what started as a small stream to support a foundation ended as a country-wide action broadcast on all television stations, spoken about in every radio and every portal possible. even now as i write this, moments after this ended, i hear the cheers, the laughter, the singing and the thank-you's that were repeated over the last week. the last time i've heard silence so intensely was when i worked as a children's animator, coming back from each party drowning in the noise and savoring it over the night. yes, savoring - i enjoyed it immensely. it was, after all, the sound of children's happiness... but here, what still resonates in my head is not the sound of a room full of children, but of the entire country being the happiest we could be.

i hope you see this around the world. i hope you can see that humans can still do beautiful things, that all it takes is one step forward. i know many people are afraid to take that step, me included, because then we'd have to lead. but how can we lead when we don't know the way either? of course we can't, so maybe instead of leading we should start wandering and see who joins us.