Mumbai Blasts and Me

I don't write much but incidents like this make me write. Today was one of the fortunate days when I miss reading news after the lunch. However, the social networking sites did their job to connect me to the world through people's posts. My feeds started flooding with terrible images and news articles... Three serial bomb blasts rocked Mumbai upside down. This disaster refreshed my memories of 7/11 and numerous similar terrorist attacks which took place recently. Like all other attacks; the damage in this one is severe. Like in case of every other human being; this news created a mixture of anger, anguish and depression in my mind.

I have been seeing two types of reactions after such incidents. One kind of people sigh saying the situation is already out of control and they blame politicians. Others express extreme anger by blaming either politicians or other government departments and agencies. I don't know whether this is right or wrong but I too do this blaming drama. However, now I can see that this reaction of wasting all the energy and emotions in blaming government has a serious flaw. This drives no result as we express our strong emotions and opinions and then forget everything after a while. So my question is what can I do to make changes around?

Every person has basic resources like time, money and energy. Additionally, everyone has a skill or expertise in some field. We should think; how can we make use of these to make changes around. In my case; how can I use my 3 basic resources as well as my technical abilities to solve these problems? I know change is not going to happen overnight and a single person is a tiny entity to make changes around. However, if we start channelizing our emotions and resources towards solving such problems; the change will take place for sure because millions of minds will be acting on a problem rather than a few government ones. Here, either one mind will find a solution or multiple minds will find parts of the solution to a problem in hand. For this we need to start reacting in a right way by channelizing some emotions toward finding solutions of these problems rather than just blaming the government.

A dialogue from some movie says, "No nation is perfect; it has to be made perfect by it's people" (It says people; not government personnel!!). Let's start thinking at an individual level; what can I do...

Barry Schwartz: Using our practical wisdom | Video on TED.com

We can't always depend upon the systems/organizations around us for happiness.

Happiness is achieved by these two things...love and work. Love for people around us and fulfilling and satisfying work. Rules and incentives of systems around us can't always help us to achieve these two. In fact; no other than one thing can help us achieve these.... "practical wisdom or knowledge". Psychologists find that wise system changers are more happy people than them who merely follow the system even if it doesn't make sense.


Barry Schwartz: Using our practical wisdom | Video on TED.com