The famous quote by Buddha means a lot to me and is the fundamental principle of my life. And, I don’t just go by the philosophy, I research on it and make my conclusions. So, I experimented for one year with a group of people from my housing society here in Mumbai.
The experiment was to get people to stop using plastic bags for buying vegetables from the vendor; on Wednesdays. In 2015, I bought 100 recyclable bags and kept them with the security guard to give it away for free.
The idea was to take the bag home and bring it back so that someone else can use it. I used to stand — for a while — for a few months to request people to use the free service I’d started. Everyone was happy and things went well for a while. Slowly, the bags started disappearing — never came back although we kept a register for people to write their apartment number. After a year, in 2016, the bags in stock were ZERO.
Yes, you read it right ZERO!
I did scrutiny with the security guard and he told that people don’t return the bag in-spite of repeated reminders. We checked with people but they gave weird reasons for not returning their bag. Now, they’ve started using plastic bags again — like they always do.
This is the best example of ignorance and narcissism. These are the same people who constantly keep blaming the Government, politicians, leaders, industrialists, Bollywood celebrities, public servants, change-makers, entrepreneurs and everyone they can find on the planet. These are the same people who keep pointing fingers at policies, trends, markets, ideas, and everything on the planet. These are the same people who don’t even spare God.
When we blame, we surrender our power to change. So, let’s introspect before point our fingers on anyone.
In a nutshell, these people are that group of people that are hate-mongers and criticizers but never do an introspection of what they are doing. And, I think this is about us all, mostly all. We’re filled with errors, weaknesses, imperfection but we always keep blaming someone else for the things we can change ourselves.
