A sudden outbreak of humanitarianism after the MH17 tragedy

As I checked my timeline, I grieved along with the families and friends of the 298 hapless people on board in the ill-starred Malaysian Airlines MH17, shot down by the Ukraine rebels who are pro-Russians. The reports and the photographs of the crash site were haunting and nightmarish. 

The number of tweets with the hash-tag #MH17 escalated, every now and then on Twitter. One of the users, Oliver Chris, tweeted “I’m sorry for all those lives destroyed so violently and without reason. I’m sorry for the continued selfish inhumanity of…people #MH17”  

Chetan Bhagat; a well known Indian author tweeted “Really sad to hear about #MH17. Strange world we live in.”
One of the people I follow on Instagram posted a photo in condolence to MH17 tragedy, captioned “F***ed up world, we live in.”
A close friend of mine told me that it is a bad time we are living in.

     To be honest, the tweets not only left me mourning but bemused me at the same time to see people talking about humanity and how human beings are being extremely selfish as though it was the first case of violence. It is not. We live in an age where we celebrate self-centeredness as well as criticize it. When it comes to ourselves, we believe that accomplishing our own dreams and wishes matter more than everything else but when another person has this very thought, we start criticizing this concept. I would feel privileged if I got the chance to ask each person tweeting about the lack of humanitarianism in the world, how they themselves are good human beings in their own society. One does not need a missile to go against humanitarianism. An ill thought and a selfish mind resulting in an unethical action in our daily lives contributes to the suffering in the world and to its evils. We always blame the time we are in, by tagging it as ‘bad’ when actually it is us who are bad.  Bad people result in bad times and make the world as strange as Chetan Bhagat believes that we live in. 

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.

The loss of the leading researchers of HIV AIDS on board MH17 is a huge loss for the world. They are the hopes of millions affected by AIDS. The masterminds behind this dreadful action are human beings. His Holiness constantly reminds us that we are different from other living beings. There are no living beings as intelligent as we are. It is humans who invented all of our technologies but when we misuse our intelligence, we are no less than the animals. Every one of us wants happiness and nobody wants suffering and pain. Science and technology have succeeded and produced a good outcome in so many areas; nevertheless, the problems caused by human beings are still rampant.

The horror of the shooting down of the MH17 flight completely changed my thoughts. Since my childhood till now, I saw airplanes in the sky as airplanes, and nothing more. But now I realise it is not just an airplane but an aircraft carrying hundreds of lives in it and hundreds more connected to those lives. Each person who died in this incident had a dream, a wish, a hope and a plan. They had families, friends and loved ones awaiting them and wishing the best for them.

     I was completely shattered and saddened by the incident .We often take every little thing in our lives for granted. We do not know when we are going to die but so caught up are we in our virtual worlds that we forget the real world we live in.

I pity those people who are unaware of being controlled by their negative emotions and hence are accumulating bad karma. Let us think of those who were grief-stricken by this tragic news. My thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the passengers and the crew members aboard MH17. May god bless us all!