Expanding Our Circle of Selfishness
I once heard Swami Bhaskarananda from the Ramakrishna Mission say that one of our primary goals in life should be to expand our circle of selfishness. As babies, we are all extremely selfish and focused on our own needs. A bit older, we expand our concept of what’s “mine” to include our immediate families. We start being protectively self-interested in our families - if any member of our family is in harm’s way, we get upset. And as we mature even further, some of us expand our concepts of “me” and “mine” to include community or country and perform great deeds as community activists or patriots.
We must recognize that as humans, it is our nature to be selfish. The question is, how wide do we make our circle of selfishness? Most people - especially in the Indo-American community - would accept that this circle should include our immediate families, extended families, and even our linguistic or religious communities. But we often have trouble expanding our circle beyond those boundaries. This perhaps explains why our community typically is good at engaging in business but bad at engaging in politics.
Almost all of you reading this blog have already taken active steps to reach beyond these boundaries, whether you realize it or not. By registering to be a bone marrow donor, you are stepping forward to be of help to anyone who needs a transplant. That anyone could be someone like Vinay or me, or it could be patients like Bevin, Savitha, or Dhiren who are still praying with all their might that their match might step forward and register to be found.
My plea to all of you is to continue spreading the word and coaxing and cajoling everyone you know to get registered. Here are some ways you can spread the word using a video from Russell Peters or another one from Rasika Mathur:
- blog about the video
- make your email footer link to it
- update your IM “status” messages about it
- get it to be one of the most watched videos on YouTube…everyone should watch it, comment on it, rate it
- upload it to Facebook (you should also upload it to the help vinay group on facebook)
- email your friends!
- “post” the link to the video on Facebook
- bulletin your friends on other social networks
- embed the video in your myspace profiles/their blogs/etc.
Thank you all for getting our campaign this far. Now let’s expand our circle even further for our brothers and sisters who need us at this critical moment.
